Aaron Siskind
American, 1903–1991
Rome 69
INV-1543
Aaron Siskind
American, 1903–19911973, printed 1988
photogravurephotomechanical process
Date
1973, printed 1988
Medium
Photogravure, from the portfolio "Homage to Franz Kline" (1988)
Dimensions
Image: 36.3 × 37.3 cm (14 5/16 × 14 11/16 in.); Paper: 65.9 × 57 cm (26 × 22 1/2 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg
Although he began his career as a documentarian, Aaron Siskind quickly became known for photographs that concerned themselves with exploring internal formal relationships rather than depicting recognizable objects. Active in the artistic milieu of postwar New York, Siskind made photographs in dialogue with the work of the Abstract Expressionist painters, with whom he was socially and professionally close. He sought to find a new language for photographic depiction that could transcend what was in front of the camera. “First, and emphatically,” he wrote in 1950, “I accept the flat plane of the picture surface as the primary frame of reference of the picture.” Siskind’s radically abstract photographs of walls covered with graffiti, chalk, or peeling paint and paper would be recognized as a pioneering development in 20th-century photography.
Also notable
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