Aaron Siskind

mounted, signed, titled, and dated by the photographer in pencil on the mount, matted, 1944

Acquired by Robert Mann Gallery, New York, from the photographer

Acquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1990

Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 49 (this print)

This wonderfully rich early print is on double-weight paper with a semi-glossy surface, and is essentially in excellent condition. The print was very slightly unevenly trimmed by the photographer prior to mounting, but this is visible only upon close examination. There is very minor, inconsequential, wear on the print's edges. The light silvering visible in the image's dark areas is wholly appropriate for a print of this age. The presentation of this photograph, which is mounted to a stiff piece of off-white illustration board with a smooth matte finish, is characteristic of Siskind's style during the 1940s. The mount has minor age-darkening on its edges, and very light soiling on the front and reverse.
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The photograph offered here was made by Aaron Siskind during a trip to Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1944.  It was during this trip that Siskind took a number of photographs of discarded work gloves set against the background of a weathered wooden wharf, including this image, which signaled a departure from the documentary work he had done up to that point.  With its literal depiction of its subject, the photograph is not without a documentary aspect.  Yet, in the isolation of the glove, and the lack of an orienting context, the photograph is an early example of the highly personal, frequently abstract, style Siskind would continue to refine in the coming decades.

Aaron Siskind took up photography at the age of 26, and was involved throughout the 1930s with the Photo League, the pre-eminent organization of socially-committed photographers in New York City.  In the 1940s, however, Siskind's gradual shift away from a straightforward documentary style strained his relationship with the Photo League, and ultimately led to his departure from the group.  By the middle of the 1940s, Siskind found new acceptance within the circle of artists that came to be known as the Abstract Expressionists.  Living in Greenwich Village, and working as a public-school teacher while pursuing his photography, Siskind was a regular participant at the boisterous gatherings at the Cedar Bar and the Waldorf Cafeteria that included the artists Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock.  While these artists were redefining painting, Siskind was staging a quieter, but no less important, redefinition of his own medium. 

In Gloucester, Siskind has created a composition which simultaneously exploits and subverts the capabilities of large-format photography.  In this photograph, he makes full use of the medium's ability to capture detail, but does this within a composition that borders on abstraction.  Rather than utilizing the camera's accurate rendering of three-dimensional space, the flattened glove and its background seem to exist on a flat plane.  Gloucester demonstrates not only Siskind's considerable photographic technique, but also his drive to push the medium in new directions.