From 1937 to 1944, Siskind took pictures in and around Harlem—of its businesses, domestic interiors, religious and social organizations, and nightlife. He did so as a member of the New York Photo League—a documentary photography collective with roots in radical leftist politics—and in collaboration with journalist and sociologist Michael Carter and other photographers as part of a cultural study of Harlem. In 1981 fifty-two of Siskind’s images were published in the book Harlem Document: Photographs 1932–1940 alongside first-person interviews conducted in the late 1930s by writers employed by the Federal Writers Project, including novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison.