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Upcoming Events

September 14, 2026

Global Course Extension in Mexico Info Session

Join us for an information session to learn about the Winter 2027 term Global Course Extension based in Cuernavaca, Mexico!

September 14, 2026

Prospective Student Session - Connect Virtually with a Current MSW Student

Join current MSW students from the Office of Student Services and Enrollment Management for a session with the intended audience of prospective students.
September 15, 2026

F26 Placement Verification Forms (PVFs) are Due to Field Instructors for Review & Approval

Students must submit their Placement Verification Forms by Tuesday 9/15/26.

This allows sufficient time for field instructors/task supervisors to make edits and/or approve PVFs by Tuesday 9/22/26.

This is a requirement to pass SW515/ SW691.

September 15, 2026

Before the Crash Out: Comedy, Conversation & Community

Laughter is medicine. Join us for an evening of stand-up comedy paired with honest conversation about mental wellness and healing in our communities.

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Artwork at the SSW

Peru 210 & Yuchitan, Mexico

Aaron Siskind (American) , 1903-1991

1955
Vintage Gelatin Silver print
98.28

SSWB 2810

Aaron Siskind was born in New York, the fifth of six children of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. He began taking pictures in the early 1930s, and in 1932 joined the Photo League a group of socially conscious photographers, many also first-generation Americans who espoused progressive social and political causes. In 1936, Siskind founded the League’s Feature Group, and created the Harlem Document, an example of which is found elsewhere in the School of Social Work collection. At the same time in New York, painters were moving away from representation into abstraction. Siskind’s work moved in this direction in the 1940s and by 1950 he embraced the flatness of the picture plane, eschewed narrative and perspective, and developed his signature style by concentrating on the expressive details of mundane subjects such as debris, graffiti, peeling paint, and similar human residue.

Early in his transformation as an abstract artist, Siskind visited Mexico and continued to travel there, and to other locations in South America as well as Europe, until the 1980s. The two abstract works here are from his first trip to Mexico and a later visit to Peru, both focusing on details of graffiti on walls. Siskind believed that the object of his vision served only the requirements of the picture. His work is, like Abstract Expressionist art, creative, gestural, and avant-garde. Because they represent the built environment and human intervention on it, however, it is tempting to see communication and even strong feelings in his photographs. For example, the photograph from Peru captures an ephemeral heart, witness to the presence of love.