Although he began his career as a documentary photographer, Aaron Siskind quickly became known for his abstract photographs. Socially and professionally close to many of the Abstract Expressionist painters in his native New York, Siskind created photographs in dialogue with painting, attempting to find a new language for photographic depiction that could transform an object into an image, a description into an idea. In this photograph, Siskind transformed a banal sight—a tar-papered wall revealing weathered wood underneath—into a near abstraction, imbuing its forms with energy and rhythm.