Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph

Learned a little bit about Diane in my school. Decided to buy a few of her books and I'm glad I did. I'm learning for real now. Her photographs are powerful and she had a good sense of her subjects.

As Diane Aubus said, 'Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that recognize.' She liked to visit unknown places, taking photos for unknown people (transvestite, nudist campers, Jewish giant, twins, etc). Reading through this collection of portraits, it would be a discovery-like journeys. Her braveness to approach the subjects. and into their places, and then into their souls. Those people are sometimes not 'beautiful', but you can see the inner world of those people under their faces. The untitled series at the end of book taken with some retarded people, I found that is certainly striking. Finally she committed suicide in 1971, just like leaving an unresolved story ending in her works. If you are into B/W photos, it is a must buy.

Quite literally, this book made me want to be a photographer.I remember seeing this book at my aunt and uncle's house when I was quite young (maybe 5 or 6). Flipping its pages as an adult is quite an experience, but as a child I was equal parts totally enthralled, disturbed, confused and yet completely smitten. I remember becoming quite familiar with the book's many characters, and always looked at this book when I visited their house.When I started experimenting in photography in my mid-teens, I became re-aquainted with it from visiting bookstores and libraries, and through art history courses. Her images I think speak more about who she is than who her subjects are, but in a way that is brutally revealing. On the surface, these photographs represent a cross-section of fringe society, with all of its inherant complexity and grit. Cross dressers, midgets, nudists, drug addicts, "dancers" and the like. But they become quite revealing about her psyche during the period she was creating this amazing body of work. She approaches each subject not at a distance, but with the sensitivity and affection of someone who really cares and is invested in these relationships. She lived with a few of these people, hung out with many others...it was the kind of company she prefered, even after being raised in a very wealthy Jewish family who owned a department store.The images are confrontational, sensational, unnerving, and a little disturbing. And some have really become icons of modern photography (the boy holding the grenade, the triplets on their bed, and many more).But what really affected me the most was the exerps collected posthumously in the beginning of the book, in which Arbus describes her method and some of the mantras of her craft. There are so many powerful statements in this preface, all of which further support the understanding of her importance in the medium. Two of her most powerful statements:"You don't put into a photograph what's going to come out. Or vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in. I have never taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.""I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them."These statements really speak volumes about the responsibilty of an artist, and how everybody has a different slant about what's in front of them. Her words occasionally provide fuel for me to take initiative in my own work and take more risks and less excuses.Definately of of the finest groups of photographs in modern art history. Hugely influential and succesful, and totally unequalled in its genre (except maybe by Nan Goldin).

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 posth

Diane Arbus is my favorite photographer and this book displays why. Her photographs show life as it is, with diversity around every corner. The images are earie as the subjects seem to be standing right in front of you. That is credited to her technique of using a flash even in the daylight. I reccomend the 25th anniversary edition because of the better quality in the prints. Every photographer or art enthusiast needs this book in their collection!

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.