Untitled
Maker
Aaron Siskind
(American, 1903-1991)
Date1936 - 1941
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 11 × 7 13/16 in. (27.9 × 19.8 cm)
Sheet: 14 × 10 7/8 in. (35.6 × 27.6 cm)
Sheet: 14 × 10 7/8 in. (35.6 × 27.6 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Estate of Lester and Betty Guttman
Collections
Object number2014.730
Status
Not on viewAaron Siskind began his photographic career as a social documentarian, photographing life during the Great Depression. These four photographs belong to a compilation of 52 photographs that made up the artist’s most famous documentary series, Harlem Document, which was part of a larger project initiated by the New York Photo League to examine urban neighborhoods. From 1932 until 1940, he made these vibrant pictures of people, streets, and home-life in Harlem, reflecting the neighborhood’s social, political, and economic conditions. The photographs have a sense of intimacy, artfully presenting Harlem as simultaneously lively, careworn, and deteriorating. Despite his skill as a social documentarian, Siskind began to shift towards abstraction in the early 1940s.
