Church Interior, Harlem, 1938

Church Interior, Harlem, 1938

Siskind, Aaron

photographer

1903 - 1991

American

1938; printed 1981

photograph; gelatin silver print

work

gelatin silver print

photographic paper

photography (process); gelatin silver process

27.94 x 35.56 cm (11 x 14 inches)

21.91 x 30.48 cm (8 5/8 x 12 iches)

2017.012.006

2017.012.006

2017.012.006

Copyright. 1938. Estate of Aaron Siskind

This photograph features a group of women at a church service. The woman at the far left is leaning on a wooden partition as she gazes directly at the viewer; her look of confusion might be in reference to the presence of the photographer. The woman in the white dress is the focal point of the photograph; she sings or exclaims passionately and takes no heed of the of the women that surround her. She also places one foot on the ledge of the wooden partition as she props up a baby in her lap. Her white uniform dress is traditional church attire among some African American women. The woman in the floral hat at her right, stares at her in awe or annoyance. The woman at the far right pays no to attention to the woman in white or the photographer and stares straight ahead at the service.

Aaron Siskind

margin, verso

Church Interior, Harlem, 1938, "HD"

verso [in pencil, in unknown hand]

Banks, Ann, and Charles Traub, eds. Harlem Document: Photographs 1932-1940: Aaron Siskind, p. 59. Providence: Matrix Publication, 1981.

Aaron Siskind was born on December 4, 1903, in New York City. He attended City College, earning his BSS in Literature in 1926. After college, he taught English in the New York City public school system from 1926 to 1947. In 1929, he married Sidonie Glaller, and received his first camera as a wedding gift. Throughout the 1930s, he was active in the New York Photo League and formed Feature Group, a documentary production unit as a part of the Photo League School. The photographs produced by Siskind and his associates were published as ‘The Feature Group’ in Photo Notes in 1940, most of them featuring scenes of city life. In the 1940s, Siskind developed ties with several New York School artists, and his work became increasingly abstract and symbolic. In 1945, he published ‘The Drama of Objects’, a series of photographs featuring compositions comprised of objects he found around Martha’s Vineyard, MA. During this period and into the 1950s, his work was regularly exhibited in New York City, particularly at the Charles Egan Gallery. In addition to his ongoing photography career, Siskind taught photography at Trenton Junior College in New Jersey from 1947 to 1949; the Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design in Chicago from 1951 to 1971, also serving as head of the Photographic Department from 1959 to 1971; and the Rhode Island School of Design from 1971 to 1976. He had a close connection with fellow photographer Harry Callahan, whom he met while teaching at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1951; the two taught and worked together for most of Siskind’s later career. From 1960 to 1970, he served as co-editor of Choice Magazine. He was a founding member of both the Society for Photographic Education and the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York and served as a board member for the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Chicago. He maintained an active photography career until his death in Providence, Rhode Island in February, 1991.

cities; black-and-white photographs; churches

http://www.howardgreenberg.com/; http://aaronsiskind.org/chronology.html

Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz (New Paltz, New York, United States)

Photography Collection. Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art

http://hvvacc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/sdma/id/5072

contemporary (generic time frame)

Contemporary (style of art)

Photo League of New York

Estate of Tennyson Schad

Gift of Howard and Ellen Greenberg

http://hvvacc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/sdma/id/5072