Aaron Siskind

Artist Research Aaron Siskind: Texture

Aaron Siskind was born in 1903 in New York City and taught high school English before he discovered his love for photography. By 1933 (only 3 years after discovering his passion) he joined the film and photo league; a group of documentary photographers devoted to improving social conditions in contemporary society through their pictures. It was during this time that Siskind produced some of his most well known documentary photographs with The Harlem Document (1937-40). This is when his work became more abstract although he faced backlash for this. Siskind's photographs have been widely exhibited and he won many awards for his photography, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Distinguished Photography Award from the Friends of Photography.

Image Analysis:

This piece has been Exhibited at Gitterman Gallery from Nov 16, 2017 – Jan 20, 2018. This specific piece is part of the abstract art movement with Siskind capturing the beutiful quality of these images, paired with the texture. Although a majority of his work is abstract, he typically focuses on showing the finer details of man made structures. In this photo you can see the rough surface of the walls paired with symmetry, Siskind heavily experiments with the natural decay of human architecture and how that can affect the texture of the structures. The manipulation of the formal elements is apparent with the purposeful zoom focusing on the wall. He used film cameras in order to create a black and white, grainy look. This creates the atmosphere of death and decay with everything in the picture looking to be the victim of time. I will attempt to use this as inspiration while focusing on the effects of time in relation to the texture of various man-made structures.

Response:

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/125, f stop 5.6

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/200, f stop 5.6

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/100, f stop 5.6

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/50, f stop 5.6

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/10, f stop 5.6

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/15, f stop 5.6

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/15, f stop 16.0

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/40, f stop 5.6

Editing Process:

In order to ensure these images were clearly inspired by Aaron Siskind the first course of action when editing these photos were to convert them into black and white to allow the similarities of the texture on man made objects to be very apparent. For this picture I wanted to focus on a very specific part of it and so I cropped the left hand side. I slightly adjusted the angle as the image wasn't perfectly straight and Siskind usually has straight pictures. I slightly reduced the exposure and increased the contrast to create a darker look for the black and white, and paired this with an increased texture and clarity to help bring out the texture of the wall. Finally I increased the whites to allow the lighter areas of the picture to come out more and be the focal point as that's primarily where the man made decay is present on this image.

Original Image:

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/160, f stop 5.6

Developed Image:

canon 800D, iso 400, shutter speed 1/160, f stop 5.6