can be recognized by a distinctive personal ap-
proach. Typical subject matter might be the remains
of a tattered poster or a paint-brushed graffito on an
urban wall. The image would take the form of a two-
dimensional plane, composed in such a way as to
emphasize its formal rather than representational
qualities. In this way, even traditionally ‘‘ugly’’ sub-
ject matter could be rendered aesthetic, and the overt
subject matter relegated to only secondary impor-
tance. As Siskind explained: ‘‘I regard the picture as
a new object to be contemplated for its own meaning
and its own beauty’’ (quoted in Lyons, 1965).
Aaron Siskind was born in New York City on
December 4, 1903. His parents were poor Russian
Jewish immigrants who settled on the Lower East
Side of Manhattan. He was the fifth of six children;
his parents spoke no English at home. He attended
Dewitt Clinton High School and gained a social
sciences degree from the City College of New
York in 1926. He then began work as an English
teacher in New York City schools and continued as
a school teacher until 1949.
From an early age, Siskind took an active interest
in radical politics. Even as a 12-year-old, he could
be seen making speeches on the streets of New
York. He became a member of the Junior Young
People’s Socialist League, and his activism contin-
ued in high school. As a senior, he was informed by
his principal that he would not be allowed to grad-
uate unless he signed a document renouncing his
political convictions. Without the diploma, he
could not matriculate at the City College. Under
protest, Siskind signed the document in order to be
allowed to continue his education.
Politics and photography combined when in
1933 Siskind joined the Workers Film and Photo
League. This was a group dedicated to document-
ing the lives of New York’s poor and disadvan-
taged, and it was through them that Siskind really
learned how to make photographs. He became a
leading member, contributing to and helping orga-
nize feature projects such as Harlem Document,
Dead End: The Bowery,The End of the Civic Reper-
tory Theater, andThe Most Crowded Blockbeween
1935 and 1941. The relationship was a stormy one,
however. Siskind clashed with what he believed to
be the League’s more politically dogmatic element,
leaving for a year from 1935 to 1936, before re-
joining and resigning again in 1941. He returned
only briefly when he was asked to organize the
historical section of theThis is the Photo League
exhibition in 1948. The disagreements between Sis-
kind and the League were only partly political. He
had become increasingly interested in the formal
qualities of photographs rather than their socially
conscious, documentary subject matter. From the
mid-1930s, Siskind had been photographing Taber-
nacle City, a religious revivalist camp on Martha’s
Vineyard off Massachusetts. He had been intrigued
by the architectural style of the buildings rather
than by the lives of the people who used them.
Some of his photographs began to concentrate on
physical detail remote from its context, and
increasingly the accent was on composition rather
than reportage. When the Tabernacle City project
was finally exhibited at the Photo League in 1941,
it was denounced by fellow members as formalist
and bourgeois. Siskind resigned for the last time.
This represented a period of personal and artistic
change for the photographer.The Harlem Docu-
ment was complete, and the United States had
entered Word War II. His first marriage was break-
ing up (it was dissolved in 1945), and he had parted
company with his photographic roots. He became a
free agent, abandoning the group aesthetic for an
increasingly personal style. He had already begun
photographing early architecture in Bucks County,
Pennsylvania, demonstrating many of the formal
and compositional concerns that he had with
Tabernacle City. It was from 1943, however, that
he developed the photographic style for which he is
best remembered, and whose influence has been
most significant since.
Photographing on the beach on Martha’s Vine-
yard, Siskind began to study strings of seaweed on
the sand. These he pictured directly from above, so
that the weed seemed to resemble a free-hand trace
of paint on canvas or charcoal on paper. He con-
tinued in similar vein the following year at Glou-
cester, Massachusetts, creating a much larger series
of work. Here, in addition to seaweed, were weath-
ered timbers, frayed string, or a discarded glove.
None of these represents traditional notions of
beauty in its original state, but here they are ordered
and composed by Siskind in such a way as to create
a new work that transcends its subject matter.
The flat plane became still more of a feature
of Siskind’s style as his work continued. As his
individual style became more established, so did
his reputation as a photographer. In 1947, he was
first exhibited at the Egan Gallery in New York,
and he began to mix with painters as well as pho-
tographers. Among the former, he associated with
New York’s abstract expressionists. Among the
photographers, he met Edward Weston and Harry
Callahan. Siskind resigned from school teaching in
1949, and Callahan’s support eventually found him
summer school work and, from September 1951, a
teaching post at the Institute of Design, Illinois
Institute of Technology, Chicago. It is a progres-SISKIND, AARON