This gallery was inspired by the photography of Aaron Siskind. Although he began his career as a social realist, Siskind came to view photography more as "a visual language of signs, metaphors, and symbols." He was one of the first photographers to combine what was known as "straight" photography (recording the real world as the lens sees it) with abstraction. During the 1940's and 50's, he experimented with interesting techniques of close-up framing and photographing details, textures, and fragments of ordinary, commonplace objects/materials in nature and architecture. Using these techniques, Siskind created a unique abstract image of the real world which, he claimed, stood independent of the original subject. This radical new work transformed Siskind's image making from documentation to expressive art and abstraction. His attention to line, shape, gesture, and texture resulted in a comparison of his work with the Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1940's with whom he identified.

I have enjoyed looking at the world through Siskind's lens remembering his words that "If you look very intensely and slowly things will happen that you never dreamed of before." It is with this inspiration that I chose the images for this gallery.