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Title: Diane Arbus : An Aperture Monograph-- Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition by Diane Arbus, Doon Arbus, Marvin Israel ISBN: 0-89381-694-9 Publisher: Aperture Pub. Date: 30 March, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: I read this book and found myself in it...literally.
Comment: A friend working in bookstore asked why I'd never mentioned being in Diane Arbus' "book of freaks". Until that moment I didn't know but of course I knew she'd photographed me. (There's a hint!) It was without a doubt one of the most intense experiences of my life. That she often saw what others could not is reflected on every page. She called her subjects aristocrats. I think you must be one to see that quality in another. The photographs taken thirty years ago are timeless.Although the clothing, hairstyles and makeup are from a definite era (sixties) one can hardly imagine the subjects dressed any other way. Arbus has created a nation of anachronisms in her book. There is a definite sense of family, of community from page to page; from a Brooklyn bedroom to a Greenwich Village park bench to a lawn party at Willowbrook. Someone asked me how it felt to be in this "book of freaks". I couldn't answer then. But now I can: Even if your face is not on the pages of Monograph you will find yourself there. Just look.
Rating: 5
Summary: the normalcy in life's freaks, the freakishness in normalcy
Comment: This collection of 81 black and white photographs by Diane Arbus was edited and designed by her daughter, Doon and friend Marvin Israel and published in 1972 after her suicide the previous year. The photographs are preceeded by text of tape recordings of classes that the photographer gave the year she died, as well as excerpts from interviews and some of her own writings on photography. The text illuminates Arbus' concerns about her art and her subjects. Although she did do studies of objects, such as Disneyland, a hotel lobby, and a Xmas tree, Arbus was more interested in people, in particular the kind of people she had never seen before. Coming from a wealthy Park Avenue background, existing in an unreal environment, cocooned from adversity, Arbus felt her immunity painful, which explains her attraction to marginalised groups. One can compare Arbus' studies to those of Robert Mapplethorpe. Mapplethorpe moved from harsh presentations of marginalised gay men's sexuality to soft focus celebrity portraiture. Arbus moved in the opposite direction, from glamour fashion photography with her then husband Alan, to her reality marginalised portraiture. Arbus' experience with fashion provides her composition and while her camera can scrutinise, her photos never patronise. Perhaps this is due to the complicitity apparent from the subjects. These people want to be photographed, and Arbus presents them with dignity. But what makes them compelling is the what Arbus described as the gap between intention and effect, what you want people to know about you and what you can't help people knowing about you. Sometimes, often the thing we see is sadness, but we can't laugh at these people because they are so unguarded. Arbus' photos aren't posed. She tells us how she arranged her view rather than arranging her subject, so that they are planned observations. The photographs here taken between 1962 and 1970 cover the range of her interest in marginalised subjects including the freaks she classified as "aristocrats" who were born with their trauma so had passed their test in life, and made her feel a mix of shame and awe. Midgets, dwarfs, nudists, transvestites, identical twins and triplets, a giant with his parents, musclemen, carnival performers, a woman with her baby monkey, and the untitled retards. This is the world Arbus entered into. It's hard not to consider her suicide as being related to the subjects of her work. Arbus was interested in exposing the flaw, and her camera gave her licence to privacy, however the cold scrutiny of her camera may have been too much when it was focused upon herself. The self portraits I have seen show her looking uncomfortable, the photographer clearly lacking the skills she would apply to her own subjects. There is a rumour that Arbus set up a camera to photograph her own death, mentioned in the Patricia Bosworth biography, though no evidence was found when her body was discovered. Like the great ones, Arbus received acclaim posthumously, and this book is an ode to her genius.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the 20th Century's most influential photo books
Comment: My paperback copy of this book purchased back in the early/mid 1970's is frayed, folded and soiled from years of regular viewing. Yet every time I look at it, I continue to be amazed at these images. This is a classic book, ranking with Frank's "The Americans", Cartier-Bresson's "The Decisive Moment" and Eggleston's "William Eggleston's Guide". Before Arbus, there was no one. After Arbus, well...maybe there still is no one. This book opened the eyes of a whole future generation of photographers. The subject matter has now been over-exposed (pun intended). But, after all the pictures and all the picture makers who followed, no one presented the subject of people living off-center better than Arbus.
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Title: Diane Arbus: A Biography by Patricia Bosworth ISBN: 0393312070 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Diane Arbus Revelations by Doon Arbus ISBN: 0375506209 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $100.00 |
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Title: The Americans by Robert Frank, Jack Kerouac ISBN: 3931141802 Publisher: Scalo Verlag Ac Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Diane Arbus: Magazine Work by Diane Arbus, Doon Arbus, Marvin Israel, Thomas W. Southall ISBN: 0893812331 Publisher: Aperture Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Diane Arbus: Family Albums by Anthony W. Lee, John Pultz ISBN: 0300101465 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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