Jules Aarons (1921 - 2008)

Obituary - Mark Feeney, Boston Globe

Jules Aarons was a Boston University physicist who was an internationally known expert in the study of radio-wave propagation. He was also an acclaimed photographer whose work is in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and Paris’s Bibliotheque Nationale.

Dr. Jules Aarons’ work as a photographer paralleled his career as
an atmospheric physicist. He began by photographing his family
in Rockaway, New York. After moving to Boston in 1947, he became fascinated by the ethnic communities of the West End and North End where  he photographed the neighborhoods in depth. Moving with
his family to Paris in 1954 to work on his Ph.D., introduced him to the human resonances of street life in urban communities internationally. Later, as he traveled throughout the world, often to remote areas for
his scientific work, and while at home, he continued to photograph people in their everyday surroundings, at work and play; observing day-to-day life experiences, always respecting and celebrating the dignity of humanity. Aarons’ commitment to his subject was visualized in a sophisticated formal understanding of the context and how that relationship revealed and confirmed deeper meaning.

He began exhibiting his poignant observations of street life during
a period when very few art galleries and museums showed photography. From the late 1940s through the 1970s, his photographs appeared in many venues including solo exhibits at MIT, The DeCordova Museum, The Farnsworth Museum, Gallery of the Cape
Art Center, George Eastman House, Library Mistral (Paris),
The Underground Gallery (NYC) and regularly at Boston’s Carl Siembab Gallery.