Alessandra Sanguinetti

Aaron Siskind began his career in the 1930s as a documentary photographer with New York's Photo League, producing socially conscious photo essays like The Harlem Document. However, during visits to Martha’s Vineyard in the 1940s, his approach underwent a radical shift. He began photographing close-up, worn, and overlooked surfaces, such as weathered wood, rope, peeling paint, and beach debris, ripping them of their real-world context to focus strictly on graphic form, texture, and lines.

By 1954, when Martha's Vineyard, IIIB was created, Siskind was closely aligned with the Abstract Expressionist painters of the New York School, including Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. Like the painters of his circle, Siskind treated the two-dimensional picture plane as the primary space of creation rather than a window into three-dimensional reality. His Martha's Vineyard series transforms organic and architectural details into stark, calligraphic shapes that resemble bold brushstrokes or gestural mark-making.

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