Aaron Siskind

Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) was an American photographer whose work moved from socially engaged documentary projects in the 1930s toward an abstract, formalist approach that aligned photography with Abstract Expressionist painting. A member of the Photo League early in his career, he later taught at Black Mountain College, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the Rhode Island School of Design.

His best-known series, including Chicago and Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation, isolate fragments of peeling walls, graffiti, and leaping bodies as flattened, gestural compositions — treating the photographic frame as a field for pure form rather than a window onto a scene.