{"id":768,"date":"2015-07-07T19:59:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T19:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/?page_id=768"},"modified":"2015-08-31T15:49:14","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T15:49:14","slug":"westport-87","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/?page_id=768","title":{"rendered":"Westport 87"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Westport 87<\/em> comes from Siskind\u2019s Tar Abstracts portfolio, a series of photographs documenting the fruits of his search for \u201cpoetic\u201d tar on asphalt roads. Siskind began his career as a documentary photographer, but turned away from representation and toward abstraction. Siskind and the Abstract Expressionist painters were mutually influential, and their works are often exhibited together. The Tar Abstracts portfolio speaks to both Siskind\u2019s photographic origins and the specifics of his distancing from them. Their subjects, if rendered in traditional documentary photographic style, would be mundane. Through his careful framing of the tar, however, he draws attention to its calligraphic curves, which combine to form a hidden geography and are evocative in their ambiguity. To complete the transformation of his subjects into things of painterly abstraction, he made prints\u00a0of the portfolio using the archaic method of photogravure in addition to gelatin silver prints.\u00a0In photogravure, a photographic negative is transferred to a copper plate, and then transferred to a print from the etching, with rich results. Through his methods, Siskind renders the mundane striking and makes a persuasive case for the expressive capacity of photography.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\"><em>-Ethan Spielman<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/\">\u2039 Return to Exhibition<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0| \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theartstory.org\/artist-siskind-aaron.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Learn more about Aaron Siskind \u203a<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Westport 87 comes from Siskind\u2019s Tar Abstracts portfolio, a series of photographs documenting the fruits of his search for \u201cpoetic\u201d tar on asphalt roads. Siskind began his career as a documentary photographer, but turned away from representation and toward abstraction. Siskind and the Abstract Expressionist painters were mutually influential, and their works are often exhibited [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1176,"featured_media":131,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-768","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/768\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/constructed-landscape\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}