Diane Arbus Revelations
by Diane Arbus
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Book Summary Information
Author: Diane ArbusEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-09-30
ISBN: 0375506209
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Random House
Book Reviews of Diane Arbus Revelations
Book Review: A glorious exhibition of Diane Arbus
Summary: 5 Stars
The legacy of dead artists is always in the hands of others. As Doon Arbus, Diane's daughter, laments, some go way to far in "analyzing" the work of her mother. (For a particularly abominable and repulsive example of this, see Anthony Lee and John Stultz's "Diane Arbus: Family Albums".)
This gigantic Arbus exhibition was mounted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It features 200 Arbus photos, spanning her entire work and more than 300 auxillary images of her notebooks, darkroom and so on.
There are several short, informative and informed essays (unlike the aforementioned "Family Albums).
The production is gorgeous.
What is unfortunate about Arbus' work is that it is rarely explained in detail. People see Arbus' work and conclude that she really saw these weird people in the wild, so to speak. The reality is shown in fair detail here. For example, Arbus' absolute classic "Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park" is shown with a contact sheet making it clear that Arbus took the one image that showed this little boy in a freakish pose. The other 11 images show a normal young boy playing. But Arbus wanted her subjects to appear as if they were trying out for a freak show. That was her point. That's why, for example, Arbus photographed "Dominatrix embracing her client" instead of a family picnic with everyone smiling for the camera.
Arbus - and this exhibition demonstrates the point - used electronic flash and high contrast to make her subjects appear weird. Weird was Arbus' metier. You can see this again in the contact sheet from which her freakish "Boy at a parade" is taken. Arbus does not print the sprightly looking woman holding a "Support Our Boys" sign and an American flag. No, she prints the pimply faced, self-concious boy wearing a plastic straw hat, a bow tie and carrying an American flag. She prints it because the harsh strobe makes the uncomfortable boy look like a freak.
Arbus was fascinated by the unsual, including twins and triplets. She suffered from various psychological problems, possibly alcoholism and drug addiction and killed herself.
She left behind a magnificient body of work, one that too often (again, see the awful "Family Albums") is subjected to academic balderdash.
In "Dane Arbus: Revelations", Arbus the person, Arbus the photographer is presented in splendid detail. It's a marvelous work.
Jerry
Summary of Diane Arbus Revelations
Diane Arbus redefined the concerns and the range of the art she practiced. Her bold subject matter and photographic approach have established her preeminence in the world of the visual arts. Her gift for rendering strange those things we consider most familiar, and uncovering the familiar within the exotic, enlarges our understanding of ourselves.Diane Arbus Revelations affords the first opportunity to explore the origins, scope, and aspirations of what is a wholly original force in photography. Arbus?s frank treatment of her subjects and her faith in the intrinsic power of the medium have produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Presenting many of her lesser-known or previously unpublished photographs in the context of the iconic images reveals a subtle yet persistent view of the world.
The book reproduces two hundred full-page duotones of Diane Arbus photographs spanning her entire career, many of them never before seen. It also includes an essay, ?The Question of Belief,? by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and ?In the Darkroom,? a discussion of Arbus?s printing techniques by Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized to print her photographs since her death. A 104-page Chronology by Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show, and Doon Arbus, the artist?s eldest daughter, illustrated by more than three hundred additional images and composed mainly of previously unpublished excerpts from the artist?s letters, notebooks, and other writings, amounts to a kind of autobiography. An Afterword by Doon Arbus precedes biographical entries on the photographer?s friends and colleagues by Jeff L. Rosenheim, associate curator of photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These texts help illuminate the meaning of Diane Arbus?s controversial and astonishing vision.
Muscle men, midgets, socialites, circus performers and asylum inmates: in the 1950s and '60s, photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971) cast her strong eye on them all, capturing them as no one else could. Her documentary-style photos of society's margin-walkers were objective and reverential, while she often portrayed so-called normal people looking far more freakish than the freaks. Her powerful work was well-received in its day. Arbus received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1963 and 1966 and was included in a major show at MOMA in 1967. But her work entered the realm of near-myth after her 1971 suicide. Posthumously cast as everything from patron saint of the underdog to a crass exploiter of the mentally challenged, Arbus has curiously never had a large retrospective until the show Revelations was organized by Arbus' family and SF MOMA. The accompanying catalogue is an oversized, sumptuous, beautifully printed tome. It includes all of the artist's iconic photographs as well as many that have never been publicly exhibited, including many pages of contact sheets, journal entries, and family snapshots. This work is so strong, it's mind-blowing. The giant in his apartment with his parents looks absolutely regal, his parents sad and confused. Are those crazy people always so happy? And what to make of this moment of extreme tenderness between a dominatrix and her client? This is a book worth hours of your time. --Mike McGonigal
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