Aaron Siskind (1903-1991) was one of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century. He began his career as a social documentary photographer under the auspices of the New York Photo League. His most notable work during this period was the Harlem Document, a moving series of portraits as well as scenes of street and home life in Harlem from 1932-1940. Harlem Document was part of a larger project initiated by the Photo League to examine urban neighborhoods. In the early 1940s, Siskind began to shift towards abstraction, inspired by images he made of found objects during visits to Martha’s Vineyard and Gloucester, Massachusetts.