Gloucester 3 1949

Aaron Siskind made this gelatin silver print. It looks like he’s been in conversation with Franz Kline, but using the camera to make the mark. I see a distressed figure in the middle, like a rubbing from a gravestone. The gesture has a kind of authority. I can imagine Siskind walking around Gloucester, finding these walls. He must have been thinking about surfaces, maybe other artists, the marks that other people make. It could be the side of a building, something corroded. These marks are like the walls of a city, built up over time. It feels like a collaboration between the photographer and time itself. It makes me think about how we choose things, how we edit, and how maybe that’s what Siskind was doing when he was looking through the camera, too. He had to choose what to frame.