A Painter´s Photographer, on view at Galerie Julian Sander in Köln, Germany, shows photographs of Aaron Siskind and references the close connection to Abstract Expressionist painting in Siskind´s work. In an essay from 1951, the artist and art critic Elaine de Kooning described Aaron Siskind as a “painter´s photographer”. After more than 60 years, Siskind remains one of the most closely connected photographers to the abstract expressionist movement of the 20th century. His flat picture planes, the low depth of field and the focus on the surface structure resonate with the gestural paintings by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Siskind also shared an artistic ethos with many of these painters. He emphasized the way his own feelings shaped the image as he made it and became part of the work itself. Aaron Siskind expanded the expressive potential of photography as much as the definition of abstraction. Through extreme close-up, an unusual angle and the abstraction from the narrative context, known subjects become abstractions, which can be re-experienced. Siskind inspired numerous painters in the beginnings of the movement in the early 1940s. He is thus rightly counted among the pioneers of abstract expressionism.
Aaron Siskind: A Painter ́s Photographer
9 September – 18 November, 2017
Galerie Julian Sander
Cäcilienstraße 48
50667 Köln
Germany
