Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) was a major figure in the history of American photography. A leading documentary photographer who was active in the New York Photo League in the 1930s, Siskind moved beyond the social realism of his early work as he increasingly came to view photography as a visual language of signs, metaphors, and symbols—the equivalent of poetry and music. Through the forties and ifties, he developed new techniques to photograph details and fragments of ordinary, commonplace materials. This radical new work transformed Siskind's image-making from straight photography to abstraction, from documentation to expressive art. His concern with shape, line, gesture, and the picture plane prompted immediate comparison with abstract expressionist painting, particularly with the art of Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. It took some years for Siskind's unprecedented photography to gain full acceptance, but, by the 1970s, he was an acknowledged master, publishing and exhibiting widely. Siskind was also one of the founding donors who established the archive at the Center for Creative Photography.
Aaron Siskind's oeuvre is so original that it defies classification, and it has not received the sustained critical attention that it richly merits. In fact, there are no other books on Siskind currently in print. Aaron Siskind presents the first complete retrospective of this legendary photographer. It highlights important, rarely published bodies of work from Harlem; from Bucks County architecture; and from the "Tabernacle," "Gloucester," "Martha's Vineyard," "Louis Sullivan," and "Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation" photo series. The book also includes an introduction by Gilles Mora, an expert on modern American photography, and texts by critic and photographer Charles Traub. This study, based on the Siskind archives at the Center for Creative Photography and supported by the Aaron Siskind Foundation, fills a resounding editorial void around one of the most challenging and important figures in the art of American photography.

Aaron Siskind: Another Photographic Reality

Arts & Photography

SISKIND, Aaron

Individual Artists

University of Texas Press

Photographs are combined with commentary and the author's reminiscences to vividly portray life in Maine

Bucks County: Photographs of Early Architecture

Published for the Bucks County Historical Society by Horizon Press

Book by Chiarenza, Carl, Siskind, Aaron

Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and terrors

Chiarenza, Carl

Photography & Video

Little, Brown in association with Center for Creative Photography

Aaron Siskind, then part of the Photo League, and the writer Michael Carter started a project in 1932 documenting life in Harlem. They worked on it for three years and put a book proposal together but it was never published. In 1939, as part of the Federal Writers Project of the WPA, Ralph Ellison recorded the oral histories of many residents of Harlem. Later, in 1940, Siskind, Carter and Max Yavno again attempted to bring the reality of life in that section of New York City to a broad audience. The war brought the project to a halt. This book presents photographs from Siskind's two projects with Ellison's oral histories of nine individuals living in Harlem at the time. Photographs by Aaron Siskind; foreword by Gordon Parks; text from the Federal Writers Project, edited by Ann Banks. 80 pages; 53 duo-toned b&amp;w photos; 8.25 x 8 inches.

Harlem Document: Photographs, 1932-1940

Matrix

Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) was a giant of architecture, the father of architectural modernism, and one of the earliest builders of the skyscraper. Along with Dankmar Adler (1844–1900) he designed many of the buildings that defined nineteenth-century architecture not only in Chicago but in cities across America—and continue to be admired today. Among their iconic designs are the former Chicago Stock Exchange, Chicago’s Auditorium Building and Carson Pirie Scott flagship store, the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, and the Guaranty Building in Buffalo. This first-of-its-kind catalogue raisonné of the work of Adler and Sullivan—both as a team and individual architects—is a lavish celebration of the designs of these two seminal architects who paved the way for the modern skylines that continue to inspire city dwellers today. The quest to pull together a complete catalogue of their work was first undertaken in 1952 by photographer Aaron Siskind and Richard Nickel, one of his graduate students at what is now the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. This intense, decades-long labor of love has resulted in an extensive and unique resource that includes a complete listing of all of the buildings and projects undertaken by Adler and Sullivan. Each listing contains historic photographs, architectural plans (when available), and a description of each project. Alongside over two and hundred fifty essays are eight hundred photographs of their buildings—many of which have since been demolished—including images by Nickel, Siskind, and other noted photographers. This rich, incomparable reference will be treasured by readers interested in architecture, photography, and Chicago’s rich history as an architectural mecca.

The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan

Vinci, John

Miller, Ward

Nickel, Richard

Architecture

Richard Nickel Committee

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Books by SISKIND, Aaron