In this Black and White photo Aaron Siskind captured a material that has the pattern of tree bark that is worn and peeling away in abstract forms from a smoother surface of wooden planks beneath. The results are abstract shapes of varying shades of gray. Primarily, the pattern of the swirling medium grays of the grain found in wood, and then the shadowed darker wood beneath, layered with the smaller highlighted triangular shapes that are formed from the peeling back material that are in the foreground. This is an unusual proportion of light and dark because normally the negative space is thought of as white (or the lightest color in the piece). This photograph is titled simply as ‘New York 1, 1988’ and could be deciphered as showing New York’s charm in the constantly apparent contrast of the new and old found along the streets of the city.
Good observation of texture, negative space and light.