Walker Warehouse

Aaron SiskindWW-1953-049914

1953·Gelatin silver print·25.6 × 32.9 cm (10 1/8 × 13 in.)

<p>As a member of New York’s Photo League in the 1930s, Aaron Siskind led classes that produced social documentary projects. During those years, he also created photographic studies of vernacular architecture on Martha’s Vineyard and in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. When he began teaching at the Institute of Design in 1951, he was thus perfectly suited to lead the Sullivan Project with a group of students, among them Richard Nickel (see related photographs on view nearby). The project aimed to comprehensively document buildings designed by the early 20th-century architect Louis Sullivan that were slated for demolition to make way for urban renewal projects. This photograph shows the Walker Warehouse, completed in 1889, just as it was being torn down. Like many of Siskind’s images, this one focuses on Sullivan’s elegant use of ornament even in utilitarian structures.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1953
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: 25.6 × 32.9 cm (10 1/8 × 13 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Aaron Siskind

Artist

Aaron Siskind

Photography

Aaron Siskind was an American photographer whose work focuses on the details of things, presented as flat surfaces to create a new image independent of the original subject. He was closely involved with, if not a part of, the abstract expressionist movement, and was close friends with artists Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.

Providence, RI, USA

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