: Few artists have had as profound and wide-ranging an impact on
their medium as has the photographer Aaron Siskind.
To mark the centenary of his birth in 1903, the Princeton
University Art Museum has organized "Aaron Siskind at 100," an
exhibition of 21 works from its permanent collection, which
contains one of the largest bodies of Siskind's vintage prints.
The exhibition has been extended through January 4.
Siskind began his artistic career as a member of the
Photo-League, an organization devoted to social and documentary
photography. In 1944, however, he made a radical change in
direction, which he described in the pages of Minicam
Photography: "For the first time in my life subject matter,
as such, had ceased to be of primary importance. Instead, I found
myself involved in the relationships of these objects, so much so
that these pictures turned out to be deeply moving and personal
experiences."
While Siskind's work was to grow increasingly abstract from this
point forward, he made no attempt to conceal his subject matter.
His are all essentially "straight" photographs - sharply focused,
fundamentally unmanipulated slices of the world before his eyes.
Although nonnarrative in its structure, Siskind's imagery
suggests both the historical past, found in the revelations of
peeling and abraded surfaces, and a dynamic and energetic present
that demands the viewers' attention.
As Peter C. Bunnell, faculty curator of photography emeritus,
noted: "His was a pictorial achievement that helped shape a
distinctly late modernist American photographic style; one that
is characterized by a rigorous adherence to the essential
qualities of the medium, and the making of a poetic image that is
the subject represented as metaphor, in a specific abstract form,
in order to express the inner self - the subconscious common to
all men and women."
The museum is located in the center of the Princeton
University campus, next to Prospect House and Gardens. For
information, 609-258-3788 or .
