Unknown photographer
Diane Arbus in Central Park with her Mamiya Camera in 1967
1967
Gelatin silver print

 

 

The power of intention

If I had to nominate one photographer who is my favourite of all time, it would be Diane Arbus. There is just something about her photographs that impinge on my consciousness, my love of difference in human beings, their subversiveness and diversity. She pictures it all, some with irony, some with love, some with outright contempt, but always with interest. In photographs of dwarfs you don’t get the majesty and beauty that Susan Sontag desired, you get something else instead: the closeness of intention and effect – this is who this person was at that particular moment represented in a photograph, the essence of their being at that particular time.

Arbus was fascinated by the relationships between the psychological and the physical, probing her subjects with the camera to elicit a physical response. Her sensory, emotional, intellectual and aesthetic intelligence creates a single experience in relation to subject, stimulating her to respond to the world in her own unique way. While Arbus may well have hated aspects of American culture – “Its hypocrisy, this ‘happy happy’ story after the war, the consumerism, the racism, she feels deeply about that,” as Anne O’Hehir, curator of the National Gallery of Australia’s American Portraits observes – she photographed everything that makes us human in profound and powerful photographs. To me, her subjects were not ‘caught off guard’ nor did they unintentionally reveal aspects of themselves – they revealed themselves to Arbus just as they are, because she gained their trust, she had empathy for who they were, an empathy that flowed both ways, enhanced by the subjects sense of Arbus’ own personal travails. …

These archetypal images have become deeply embedded in the collective conscience where conscience is pre-eminently the organ of sentiments and representations. The snap, snap, snap of the shutter evinces the flaws of human nature, reveals the presence of a quality or feeling to which we can all relate. As Arbus states, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And more complicated. This is why these photographs always capture our attention because we become, we inhabit, we are the subject. They are the flaw in us all. They are legend.

Dr Marcus Bunyan 2012/2018

 

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Muscle Man in his dressing room with trophy, Brooklyn, N.Y.
1962
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Child with toy hand grenade, in Central Park, New York City, 1962
1962
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I., 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Triplets in their Bedroom, N.J.
1963
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning, N.J.
1963
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C., 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Woman with a beehive hairdo
1965
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A young man and his pregnant wife in Washington Square Park, N.Y.C., 1965
1965
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., 1966
1966
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A young man in curlers at home on West 20th St., N.Y.C., 1966
1966
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, NYC., 1966
1966
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Seated man in a bra and stockings, N.Y.C., 1967
1967
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A Jewish Giant at home with his parents
1967
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C., 1967
1967
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Woman with Veil on Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C.
1968
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A family on their lawn one Sunday in Westchester, N.Y.
1968
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
A naked man being a woman, N.Y.C.
1968
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Mexican dwarf in his hotel room N.Y.C., 1970
1970
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Tattooed Man at a Carnival, MD
1970
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Untitled
1970-1971
Gelatin silver print

 

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Untitled (6)
1970-1971
Gelatin silver print

 

 

Diane Arbus exhibitions and photographs on Art Blart

~ Review: ‘Diane Arbus: American Portraits’ at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, March – June 2018
~ Exhibition: ‘Diane Arbus’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris, October 2011 – February 2012
~ Exhibition: ‘Pierre Leguillon features Diane Arbus: A Printed Retrospective, 1960-1971’ at the Modern Museum, Malmo, March – August 2010
~ Exhibition: ‘Diane Arbus’ at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, May – August 2009