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Aaron Siskind

Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation 59, 1956

Description

Maker

  • Aaron Siskind, 1903-1991, American, (RISD Faculty 1971-1976, Photography)

Title

Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation 59

Year

1956

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • silver print,
  • silver gelatin print

Dimensions

Mount: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 inches)

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Photographs

Credit

Gift of Aaron Siskind

Object Number

73.011.7

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Aaron Siskind

October 10, 2003 - January 11, 2004

“The thing that stimulated me most was in my mind there was this title, which happened to me very rarely, “the pleasures and terrors of levitation.” And so I began working on that. That helped me determine a number of things, you know, that the picture had to be square, that the ground had to be negative, no clouds and that kind of stuff, and the figure itself was not to have too much detail. Those were the determinations I made. In order to get that kind of a picture of the kids diving in the lake, I had to be there at a certain time so that sun was not too far in the west and it would hit them. And, I would get a fully delineated figure. I have to be there on a day when there were a lot of people, especially young people there who were horsing around, you see, ‘cause then things happened. A guy came up there and did a perfect swan dive, it didn’t interest me at all.” Siskind in taped conversation with Harry Callahan and David Travis at Art Institute of Chicago, May 27, 1982.

Related

No Image Available

Aaron Siskind

Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation, 1953-1961

More objects +

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation 59 with the accession number of 73.011.7. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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