Aaron Siskind and Louis Sullivan: The Institute of Design Photo Section Project

A fascinating book for followers of both architecture and photography: the first publication of a project
that involved two giants of American arts, photographer Aaron Siskind and architect Louis Sullivan,
called the father of modernism, and the creator of the skyscraper. In 1952, while Siskind was teaching at
Chicago s Institute of Design, he and his advanced photography students undertook a comprehensive
photographic survey of Sullivan s architecture, eventually shooting over 60 buildings.

From hundreds of photographs, Siskind composed an exhibit of 126 photographs of 35 buildings by
Sullivan, who died in 1924. Siskind's exhibit was a documentation of Sullivan s architecture unlike any
other - and one that could never be repeated, because so many of Sullivan s buildings were demolished
shortly thereafter. More than 50 years later, the photographs are still fresh: Sullivan's buildings are
arrested in their decline, their darkened ornament luminous in Siskind's incomparable compositions.

In fine accompanying texts, this book also tells the story of the exhibit, relating the Sullivan project to
Siskind's documentary and abstract work and to earlier Sullivan building photographs. The use of
architectural photographs was an essential part of early modern architectural exhibits and histories that
sought to codify the International Style. Siskind's innovative photographs and equally innovative exhibit
installation challenged the opinions of Sullivan and modern architecture by architectural historians at the
time. Includes 166 black and white reproductions.