A Hundred Seconds of Solitude

Aaron Siskind was teaching English in Manhattan in 1929 when he received a camera as a wedding gift. A teacher he already was; a photographer he soon became, taking pictures of city life for the New York Photo League, and late in his first decade he took this photograph of St. Joseph’s House, the Catholic Worker house in Manhattan, probably at its longtime Mott Street location on the Lower East Side.

What’s striking about this photograph, to my eye, is the profound solitude of the figure. The canonical images of the Catholic Worker movement from its founding era show people in groups: men on the soup line, Catholic Workers “selling” the current issue of the newspaper for the proverbial “a penny a copy,” Catholic Workers arranged in awkward semi-formality outside St. Joseph’s House for a group portrait.

Here the figure, whoever he is, he has gone to the back of the building and found a little space and light; and the photograph finds him in counterpoint with the figure silhouetted in the front doorway of the building, who is possibly seeking a little space and light himself.

Which one is a Catholic Worker, and which is a guest who has come for a meal? You can’t tell. We can’t tell the difference. That is the point of the photograph, and of the movement.

St. Joseph’s House is now at 36 East First Street, still on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Earlier this fall some of the present-day Catholic Workers sought out StoryCorps, hoping to record firsthand recollections of Dorothy Day, the movement’s foundress. We’re now making arrangements to incorporate these into the American Pilgrimage Project, a partnership between StoryCorps and Georgetown devoted to gathering the stories of the role religious belief plays in the experience of ordinary Americans at crucial moments in their lives.

A slideshow of Siskind’s early work from yesterday’s Times is here. Siskind’s photograph of the St. Joseph’s House interior is here.

• 13 October 2014
• 1