Siskind, Aaron, 1903–91, American photographer, b. New York City. A member of the Photo League in the 1930s, he began as a documentary photographer, creating such series as Dead End: The Bowery and Harlem Document (1932–40). Aiming to make photographs aesthetic objects in their own right, in the early 1940s Siskind began to create the abstract images for which he is now principally known. Shooting at close range, he photographed graffiti, peeling plaster, sections of signs and billboards, road surfaces, and various organic and found objects. Many of his powerful 1950s images clearly relate to the paintings of his abstract-expressionist friends such as Kline Kline, Franz, 1910–62, American painter, b. Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He studied (1937–38) in England, then settled in New York City. From the early 1950s, Kline exhibited large canvases of dynamically painted black-and-white grids.
..... Click the link for more information. , Motherwell Motherwell, Robert, 1915–91, American painter and writer, b. Aberdeen, Wash. Motherwell taught art at several colleges and during the early 1940s he became a cogent theoretician of abstract expressionism .
..... Click the link for more information. , and de Kooning de Kooning, Willem (də k

`nĭng), 1904–97, American painter, b.
..... Click the link for more information. , and he radicalized photography much as those painters revolutionized their medium. Siskind's photographs, even his late series of midair divers, remained essentially abstract for the rest of his career. A very influential teacher, he (and his friend and colleague Harry Callahan Callahan, Harry Morey, 1912–99, American photographer, b. Detroit. Self-taught, he began taking pictures (1938) as a hobby and, inspired by the work of Ansel Adams , began to produce professional-quality photographs in the 1940s.
..... Click the link for more information. ) taught at Chicago's Institute of Design (1951–71) and the Rhode Island School of Design (1971–76). His work has been published in a number of books, notably Aaron Siskind, Photographer (1965), Places, 1966–1975 (1976), Aaron Siskind 55 Series (2003), and Aaron Siskind 100 (2003).

Siskind, Aaron

(born Dec. 4, 1903, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 8, 1991, Providence, R.I.) U.S. photographer, teacher, and editor. He began to photograph in 1932 while teaching English in a public school. While documenting the Great Depression, he attended as closely to pure design as to his subjects. In the 1940s he began to photograph patterns and textures of subjects such as coiled ropes, footprints in sand, and weathered pavement and billboards. Though not immediately accepted by photographers, his abstract work was admired by painters Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, with whom he later exhibited. He was most influential as a professor of photography and as coeditor of the magazine Choice.

Siskind, Aaron (1903– ) teacher, photographer; born in New York City. An English teacher, he started taking photographs in 1930, focusing on the textures of everyday objects. He taught photography at the Illinois Institute of Technology (1951–71).