Aaron Siskind’s black and white image is a wall in New York with torn images posted on it. This photograph was taken in 1988 which was an election year. The posters on this wall were most likely related to the election. They also have the same diagonally striped border, so they were from the same publisher. The most intact image on the wall is on the left. It contains a group of interracial people sitting and standing together. The poster is illegible due to the tearing, so only the image and a few letters are shown. The people in the image do not have happy faces. The other poster on the right has been scratched off in the middle, making it impossible to see what was there before. However, there is a slight remanence of women. The bare parts of the wall are worn down brick, further emphasizing a sense of destruction. The rest of the posters are completely torn up, and all that remains are the edges. The posters look like they were torn up by the wind and have been up for a while, curling up at the edges. Siskind wanted his photography to provoke feeling and not be objective, achieved through black and white photography of destroyed and abandoned posters.
One thought on “New York 51”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Good observations and description. Well done! Don’t forget to put in the category.