Siskind's work has a large presence and is quite revolved landscape during the 20th century American photography, his work is the foundation from accomplishments and influence from his art and teaching. It was in 1929 when he got married and following this he became overshadowed by physical and mental illness as his wife suffered varieties of illnesses, Siskind felt a dissonance and distance of individuals and harmony of partnerships and community and as a present for his first marriage was given a camera and this was when he stared to experiment a bit more and in 1932 purchased a better quality camera and joined Film and photo league in New York, and here he was taught how to develop and enlarge his photographs.

Often compared to abstract expressionists especially painters such as William de Kooning, Barnett Newman and Franz Kline and Siskind's photographs had quite an influence as did their work. Siskind's manner of working was zooming in on visual details and fragments in ways that explored gesture and shape and working differently to photographing the normal subject matter. He has explored various terrains of existance through his camera lens.

What I like about Siskind's work is the way he photographs different textures and shapes which are interesting to me and throughout my project, I have been trying to create photographs like this in my work.

"I'm coming out of the dark into the light all of the time, and back into the dark all the time"

This is shown throughout his images he photographs and showing ideas of loneliness in an emotional and social state. Whilst photographing Siskind entered a realm of concentration and wordless emotion leaving him quite exhausted and was lonely but his drive for passion is what motivated him to photograph and bring order, harnessing the beauty and frame its meaning. Siskind's photographs are quite abstract and include different markings or peeling posters with various interesting textures which what I was drawn to in his work. 

The photographs make the viewers confront the hidden world that we are inhabited in and everyday things that we miss. The different things that guided Siskind was different forms such as rhythm of gesture, shapes and tonalities which can be shown through his photographs. When photographing, he did not have political ideas in mind or documentary in a literal way but what he had was a 'Mozart Sonata' and his photographs are more abstract which is what I want to showcase in my work and look at the tranquility around me and things that bring be joy and are calming.

Siskind was quite interested in going out as he found his home life quite unexciting and from there he found beauty and discovery to different marks and expressions. Also being a part of the Clionian Society, a literary club with some of the members being painters such as Barnett Newman and this group often attended free concerts at the metropolitan Museum of Art and looking through the galleries. These different visits exposed Siskind to art more so and he became drawn to Renaissance, Gothic art and architecture, he started visiting different Cathedrals and chapels  and through here, he developed a sense of importance towards symbols, icons and rituals and this can somewhat be seen through his photographs. He developed into doing some documentary photography - keeping everything into sharp focus and shooting from a simple point of view.

The documentary projects the Features group created, was made up from lots of planning and research and in the 1940s, Siskind began making more mature and artistic pictures and decided to abandon the deliberate pre-planning and responded to subject matter. This is similar to some of my shoots, where I don't have a particular plan of what I want to make and just photograph the surrounding beauty and things that you are drawn to around you and then reflecting on the images later on to see how you can improve. Although later on, Siskind realised that there was a parallel to prior research in his use to prior experience.

In the summer of 1943, he did something what he called a 'picture experience' and devoted himself to things that he sensed were important and let these different objects speak for themselves. Sometimes this helps and the photographs do speak for themselves but other times a meaning is there and why the photograph was made.

What I like about these is the different textures especially the one from the bark of a tree and the various shapes and movement and I'm going to create some photographs similar to Siskind's work.

"I didn't push photography, photography in a sense led me"

In his work, Siskind framed these different objects with strong geometric compositions, which is what drew me to his photographs. Something that he said was "The object is there, and yet it's not an object. It's something else. It has a meaning, and the meaning is partly the object's meaning, but mostly my meaning."

In my work I create the photographs for me and I enjoy photographing and exploring different areas which is what I have been trying to create through this project and linking it to tranquility and the different walks I go on whilst photographing bring me peace.

This photograph below is from Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation, 1962 and the series has been a series for more than ten years where his picture concept became more complex. Later on, the photographs became more baroque, unpure and un-classical, by Baroque he meant more complicated compared to the singular exposures from his earlier work from this series.

I quite like this photographs and the experimentation of double exposure as it adds depth to the work and an interesting way to make photographs.