Aaron Siskind trained as a writer before turning to photography in the 1930s. Friends with Abstract Expressionists Franz Kline, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, he exhibited at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York. An influential teacher, Siskind joined the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1951 and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1971 – 1976. He was a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education and received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1966.