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. Aarons was born in 1921 and passed away in 2008.
Aarons worked for many years as a senior scientist at the Air Force
Geophysics Research Laboratory at Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts. He
joined the faculty at Boston University in 1981, the year he retired from the
geophysics laboratory, and helped establish Boston University's Center for
Space Physics in 1987.
A pioneer in space physics, Aarons contributed to advances in satellite
and global positioning technology. "Essentially, I tried to understand the
effects of the earth's atmosphere on radio waves,'' he said once, describing
his scientific work.
From 1980 to 1983, he was chairman of the International Radio Science
Union's Commission on Ionospheric Radio Wave Propagation.
Aarons's photographs are notable for their liveliness, informality, and
emotional warmth. He excelled at street photography: casual documentary images
of urban life. "My basic approach to street portraits was to avoid intruding
on the scene,'' he said. He began taking photographs while an undergraduate at
the City College of New York.
The Boston Public Library, whose print department has an extensive
collection of his photographs, held a one-man show of his work in 1999, "Into
the Streets.'' Aarons also had solo shows at many other art museums,
institutions, and galleries.
"I knew that the dynamics of people whose social relationships
involved their neighbors and the streets could be a source of creativity,''
Aarons said.
He gravitated to Boston's old West End, before urban renewal demolished
much of the neighborhood, and then to the North End. He visited with his
camera, a double-lens Rolleiflex, on late afternoons and weekends.
"In 1947, I began to take black-and-white photographs with the aim
to document Boston, its streets and its people, while also developing my own
style. I resolved to capture the day-to-day life experiences of the people,
avoiding scenes of poverty.''
Among photographers who influenced him were Sid Grossman, with whom he
briefly studied, Lisette Model, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Aarons was born in the Bronx, New York. His father worked in the garment
industry. After graduating from the City College of New York in 1942, he served
in the Army Signal Corps, where he became interested in electronics.
After the war, he went to work at Hanscom and earned a master's degree
in physics from Boston University in 1949. He went to Paris on a Fulbright
grant in 1953 and earned his doctorate at the University of Paris.
Aarons used his time in France to photograph and study. He would
continue to use his scientific career to contribute to his photography. Going
to professional conferences, he made a point of bringing along his camera.
Thus his work includes images taken in Western Europe, India, Japan,
South America, Israel, and Puerto Rico.
Aarons printed his own photographs. His eyes eventually developed an
intolerance to darkroom chemicals, which caused him to abandon photography in
1981; instead, he turned his darkroom into a pickle making and bread baking
facility.
Jules Aarons was equally devoted to his family as he was to his
scientific and artistic pursuits. He was a loving husband to his wife
Jeanette, and a great father to his two sons, Philip and Herbert Aarons.
Aarons was also very devoted to his sister Muriel Torres and his three
grandchildren: Zach, Sam, and Solisa Aarons.
All images © Jules Aarons
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