[1] Sievan was born in 1907 to Polish immigrants, and grew up in New York City on the Lower East Side neighborhood.
She then attended Hunter Teachers College where she concentrated her studies in physics and mathematics.
[3] In 1938, she attended her first photography course with Eliot Elisofon at the American Artists School.
Following that, at the New School for Social Research where she worked with Berenice Abbott, and became Weegee's part-time darkroom assistant.
[3] Her work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum,[2] the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[4] the National Portrait Gallery, Washington[5] and the International Center of Photography,[6]