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AARON SISKIND
1903 - 1991
Aaron Siskind was born in New York City on December 4, 1903. He earned a Bachelor of Social Science degree in 1926 and taught English in the New York City public schools for the next twenty-one years. During the 1930s he was active in the New York Workers Film and Photo League, and established the Feature group, a documentary production unit, as part of the Photo League School. During this period he produced several photo series independently and in collaboration, including: The Catholic Worker Movement, Dead End: The Bowery, the End of the Civic Repertory Theatre, and others. In 1940 he published photographs in "The Feature Group" in Photo Notes. During the forties, he created increasingly symbolic and abstract photographs based on discarded and found objects in Martha's Vineyard and Gloucester, Massachusetts. From 1945 he published "The Drama of Objects" in Minicam Photography and established close and enduring ties to the New York School artists. He exhibited regularly at Charles Egan Gallery.
In 1951, Elaine de Kooning wrote "The Photographs of Aaron Siskind" as the introduction to an exhibition of Siskind's photographs at Charles Egan Gallery. Also that year, he taught during the summer at Black Mountain College with Harry Callahan. A few years later, at Callahan's invitation, Siskind joined the faculty of the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. There he directed and participated in advanced student projects including the following studies: Apartment Interiors of the Mies van der Rohe Lake Shore Drive Skyscrapers, A Chicago Settlement House, and others. In the sixties he became a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education. From 1971 till his death in 1991 he continued to make photographs and was published and exhibited widely as an established master. He died in Providence, Rhode Island on February 11th.
Siskind, Aaron, ed. by Deborah Martin Kao and Charles A. Meyer. AARON SISKIND: TOWARD A PERSONAL VISION 1935-1955. Chestnut Hill, Mass.: Boston College Museum of Art, 1994: 80.
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