1. Aaron Siskind was an American photographer whose work focuses on the details of things, presented as flat surfaces to create a new image independent of the original subject.
15 Facts About Aaron Siskind
1. 2.
Aaron Siskind was closely involved with, if not a part of, the abstract expressionist movement, and was close friends with artists Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.
3.
Aaron Siskind was a grade school English teacher in the New York Public School System for 25 years, and began photography when he received a camera as a wedding gift and began taking pictures on his honeymoon.
4.
In 1942, Aaron Siskind met Ethel Jones, with whom he stayed for several years.
5.
Aaron Siskind separated from her in 1956, and divorced her a year later.
6.
Aaron Siskind remained married until his wife's death on January 30,1976.
7.
Early in his career Aaron Siskind was a member of the New York Photo League, where he produced several significant socially conscious series of images in the 1930s, among them "Harlem Document", a book published in 1981 featuring a collection of 52 photographs, including portraits of residents, as well as photographs of street and domestic life in Harlem.
8.
In 1950 Aaron Siskind met Harry Callahan when both were teaching at Black Mountain College in the summer, where he met Robert Rauschenberg who throughout his life always kept a particular Aaron Siskind print on his work wall.
9.
Later, Callahan persuaded Aaron Siskind to join him as part of the faculty of the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago.
10.
Aaron Siskind used subject material from the real world: close-up details of painted walls and graffiti, tar repair on asphalt pavement, rocks, lava flows, dappled shadows on an old horse, Olmec stone heads, ancient statuary and the Arch of Constantine in Rome, and a series of nudes.
11.
Aaron Siskind worked all over the world, visiting Mexico in 1955 and the 1970s, and Rome in 1963 and 1967.
12.
Aaron Siskind did the Tar Series in Providence, Vermont, and Route 88 near Westport, Rhode Island, in the 1980s.
13.
Aaron Siskind continued making photographs until his death from a stroke on February 8,1991.
14.
Aaron Siskind's process revolved around hyper-focusing on what he was photographing, and leaving the background blurry or distractions out of frame.
15.
From 1941 to 2022, Aaron Siskind's photographs have been featured in 38 exhibitions at MoMa in New York City.