Customer Reviews

Harlem Photographs 1932-1940

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Aaron Siskind is one of America's finest photographers and this wonderful book, shamefully out of print, shows his documentary images of residents of the real Harlem in the 1930's. If you are familiar only with Siskind's abstract photographs, these will come as something of a shock. They are beautiful, simple, elegant and filled to bursting with the pride of the people who are the subjects of Siskind's work.

The book contains images from three separate photo projects that Siskind undertook in the 30's for The New York Photo League. They were collected and exhibited by the Smithsonian (National Museum of American Art) in Washington, D.C. in 1991.

The beautifully written (almost poetic) foreword is by artist/photographer/film maker/writer/etc. Gordon Parks and is worth the cost of the book alone. There is also a well-written introduction to the photographer and his work by Marcia Battle and, most impressive is an oral history of eight of the people Siskind was immortalizing, done for the Federal Writers Project, worthy of Studs Terkel.

But it's the photographs that will stay with you: a nattily dressed old man, obviously a performer, waiting backstage for his cue to go on; a young girl, sitting on a milk can instead of a chair, eating a meal with her young mom in their kitchen under the freshly washed laundry which has been hung to dry; Jones Barber Shop (Haircut: 25 cents)comfortably sharing a brownstone on West 132nd Street with the Young Students Interdenominational Minister's Alliance right next door to May's And Johnson's Beauty School; a nude, black dancer performing for white patrons only; the proud owner of Our Own Community Grocery and Delicatessen (Milk 6 cents, Bacon 10 cents) posing in the sun in front of his shop. Every image takes us back to a specific time with very specific people. And in every image Siskind's art is very evident.

This book should not only be put back into print, it should be required in our schools. This is American history beautifully and movingly rendered. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

In the thirties while Siskind was a member of the Photo League he shot plenty of documentary photos, the majority of which were in Harlem. The fifty-two here certainly show the community struggling during the Depression years. An interesting photo on page sixty-three shows a mother and daughter at mealtime with the little girl sitting at the table on a milk churn, a line of washing hangs across the room but also included are photos of the black community at leisure with perhaps the most well known photo from this period of Siskind's work: the two dancers in flamboyant action at the Savoy Ballroom in 1937.

What gives this book extra values though are the stories from eight individuals based on oral interviews collected by the Federal Writers Project during the thirties. Mixing these with the photos certainly lifts the book out of the ordinary. Another fascinating book about a black community that uses this technique is Maren Stange's Bronzeville: Black Chicago in Pictures, 1941-1943, with over a hundred stunning photos of the South Side from 1941 to 1943.

The eight inch square format of the book works well with the photos printed on matt art with a 200 screen. The only slight annoyance is that the photos are not captioned but apart from that I've always enjoyed coming back to Siskind's work in this book. After the forties his interest in documentary work faded and he started to explore the more personal photo style of abstract realism.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

Aaron Siskind is one of America's finest photographers and this wonderful book, shamefully out of print, shows his documentary images of residents of the real Harlem in the 1930's. If you are familiar only with Siskind's abstract photographs, these will come as something of a shock. They are beautiful, simple, elegant and filled to bursting with the pride of the people who are the subjects of Siskind's work.

The book contains images from three separate photo projects that Siskind undertook in the 30's for The New York Photo League. They were collected and exhibited by the Smithsonian (National Museum of American Art) in Washington, D.C. in 1991.

The beautifully written (almost poetic) foreword is by artist/photographer/film maker/writer/etc. Gordon Parks and is worth the cost of the book alone. There is also a well-written introduction to the photographer and his work by Marcia Battle and, most impressive is an oral history of eight of the people Siskind was immortalizing, done for the Federal Writers Project, worthy of Studs Terkel.

But it's the photographs that will stay with you: a nattily dressed old man, obviously a performer, waiting backstage for his cue to go on; a young girl, sitting on a milk can instead of a chair, eating a meal with her young mom in their kitchen under the freshly washed laundry which has been hung to dry; Jones Barber Shop (Haircut: 25 cents)comfortably sharing a brownstone on West 132nd Street with the Young Students Interdenominational Minister's Alliance right next door to May's And Johnson's Beauty School; a nude, black dancer performing for white patrons only; the proud owner of Our Own Community Grocery and Delicatessen (Milk 6 cents, Bacon 10 cents) posing in the sun in front of his shop. Every image takes us back to a specific time with very specific people. And in every image Siskind's art is very evident.

This book should not only be put back into print, it should be required in our schools. This is American history beautifully and movingly rendered. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.