The Center for Creative Photography has one of the largest holdings of twentieth-century American photography in the world. The Collection numbers over 60,000 photographs, including 900 by Aaron Siskind and another 900 by Max Yavno, the two photographers featured here.
Aaron Siskind's archive was acquired between 1975 and 1992. It includes fine prints, negatives, contact sheets, proof prints, correspondence, handwritten drafts of writings, exhibition files, publication files, taped interviews, and other memorabilia.
Max Yavno's archive was acquired in 1992. It includes fine prints, negatives, business and correspondence files, examples of his ceramic and bronze sculpture, part of his personal library, and other memorabilia.
Scholars from all over the world visit the Center to study the archives of many important photographers like Siskind and Yavno.
All of the photographs in this guide
are gelatin silver prints. The term "gelatin silver" is a technical name for
the most
common type of "black-and-white photograph." It refers to a print
made on photographic paper coated with a
light-sensitive emulsion containing silver.
Both Siskind and Yavno preferred
using larger format cameras which yielded negatives in either a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4"
size or a 4 x 5" size, much larger than the negatives produced by the 35mm cameras
in common use today. The
larger negatives provided crisper definition in the finished print. These and
many other conscious choices made by
each photographer allowed them to carefully control the results of their final
prints.
http://www.creative photography.org This page last updated June 29, 1999. oncenter@ccp.library.arizona.edu