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Title: Harlem: Photographs 1932-1940 Aaron Siskind by Aaron Siskind, Maricia Battle, Ann Banks, Federal Writers' Project, Gordon Parks ISBN: 1-56098-041-9 Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press Pub. Date: February, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: ONE OF AMERICA'S FINEST
Comment: 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.