Diane Arbus

Wow, no thread for her. Just started Arthur Lubow's biography; read Patricia Bosworth's earlier one years ago.

http://annaheross.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/child-with-toy.jpg

I figured there might be an interview with her on YouTube, found this instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_0sQI90kYI

A lot of the voice-over (read by a friend of Arbus's) turns up verbatim in the Lubow biography; he obviously consulted this.

Just read his account of the boy, Colin Wood, in the photo above--fascinating.

I knew about Anderson Cooper's famous mom, and that he came from wealth, but whoa--never knew he was photographed as a baby by Arbus.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/anderson.jpg

NYC heads up: there's a tremendous exhibition of her photographs taken at facilities for the developmentally disabled. Ends on December 15.
https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/diane-arbus-untitled

i'll probably go to this. i've always been skeptical of her, though, after reading sontag's essay. has that been discussed on ilx ever? i'd link it but i can't find a free version

Arbus is highly fucking problematic for me. Her photos are beautifully executed, and they do encourage us to look where we would otherwise avert, but when the impact of her most famous work hinges on the obvious abnormality of her subjects, it's hard to defend.

This is why I find William Eggleston so compelling - he photographs people whom Arbus might have photographed (in her less sensationalist work) but renders them with mystery and dignity intact. Which Arbus often did as well, but her other images undermine that.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eTvt_vRURDU/V0LpgfJGNKI/AAAAAAACNUQ/Kcnvncy172swgOgPPaoDnTrcuSN22_7tgCLcB/s1600/William-Eggleston-8.jpg
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CF712W6ocmQ/V0LpbUwI87I/AAAAAAACNS8/MjE506oyyf0rogZ84L6RQ2OO-bhFJ9ObgCLcB/s1600/William-Eggleston-21.jpg
plus, oh my god, the colour https://www.vintag.es/2016/05/37-breathtaking-color-photographs-of.html
My apologies for thread hijack; flag at will.

no one is going to flag you for sharing thoughts on photography on the diane arbus thread. if they do, i will ban them.

after reading sontag's essay. has that been discussed on ilx ever? i'd link it but i can't find a free version

The essay is in Sontag's On Photography anthology (but w/o the "Freak Show" title) - you can find it on LibraryG*n*s*s or elsewhere on the dark net. Re-reading Sontag's essay now in 2018, I'm struck at how temporally quaint it is. Sontag herself calls Arbus' subjects "pathetic, pitiable, as well as repulsive" (she is just as horrified by Tod Browning's Freaks), but Arbus gets the bricks because she's upper-class. She's not wrong, but 40+ years later the criticism feels hollow. Can't imagine anyone in '72 dealing with, say, Joel-Peter Witkin.

Anyway, go see the exhibition if you can.

he photographs people whom Arbus might have photographed (in her less sensationalist work) but renders them with mystery and dignity intact. Which Arbus often did as well, but her other images undermine that.

I feel the same way about Mary Ellen Mark's work (and find them 1000x more compelling than Arbus')

Going only by the two biographies, Arbus did seem to feel a kinship with most of the people she photographed. She came from a another world--she was born into wealth, although it was an affectatious, somewhat illusory wealth--but she felt quite apart from that. Anyway, when I look at my favourite photographs by her, all of that disappears (including the valid criticisms). I look at that kid with the toy grenades, and words fail. (I'm not trying to duck a difficult subject--they really do.)