{"id":8242,"date":"2025-06-02T17:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/02\/diane-arbus-revisited-in-two-landmark-retrospectives-in-la-and-ny\/"},"modified":"2025-06-02T17:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T17:00:15","slug":"diane-arbus-revisited-in-two-landmark-retrospectives-in-la-and-ny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/02\/diane-arbus-revisited-in-two-landmark-retrospectives-in-la-and-ny\/","title":{"rendered":"Diane Arbus Revisited in Two Landmark Retrospectives in LA and NY"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Diane Arbus, Triplets in their bedroom, NJ<\/em>, 1963. \u00a9 The Estate of Diane Arbus<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMost people go through life dreading they\u2019ll have a traumatic experience,\u201d photographer Diane Arbus<\/a> once said. \u201cFreaks were born with their trauma. They\u2019ve already passed their test in life. They\u2019re aristocrats.\u201d The way we talk about people has come a long way; sadly, the way we treat people has not. Arbus had a knack for capturing the interior lives of people at the fringes: the \u2018freak\u2019 in a circus act, the \u2018female impersonator\u2019 in a nightclub, an appendage to a boyfriend, an elderly woman in fur wearing white gloves and pearls with bows on her shoes. We can see through Arbus\u2019 lens how these people were treated and the circumstances of their lives; her photographs were and are invitations to engage with others.<\/p>\n

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Arbus brings us the marginal, the unseen, the forgotten. She reminds us, in her words, that, \u201cThe mistake is to think people are sealed and absolute. They are just instruments of life, and it flows through them to the point where their edges are invisible.\u201d It\u2019s the mark of a true artist\u2014one who pushed beyond society\u2019s comfort zone and tapped into the unknown. She is unique and indelible, courageous, devoted to her work, forceful and hard to ignore.<\/p>\n

Arbus was born in 1923 in Manhattan and died there at 48 by suicide. In between, she had two daughters with photographer Allan Arbus<\/a>: Doon and Amy. She photographed, often with accompanying stories in her own words, for Harper\u2019s Bazaar, Esquire, Sunday Times Magazine and Artforum. Among her subjects were Mae West<\/a>, film stars Lillian and Dorothy Gish<\/a>, poets and close friends W. H. Auden<\/a> and Marianne Moore<\/a>, Marcel Duchamp<\/a> and Agnes Martin<\/a>. A nudist camp, carnival acts such as razor and sword swallowers, contortionists, strippers, \u201cdwarfs\u201d and poor sharecroppers, as well as society\u2019s elite, all became art under her gaze.<\/p>\n

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SEE ALSO: Observer Reviews \u201cLeigh Bowery!\u201d at Tate Modern <\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Her subjects often stare directly into the camera, offering themselves up to be seen and scrutinized. In some cases, subjects\u2019 self-scrutiny inspired ire. Norman Mailer<\/a> didn\u2019t appreciate his \u201cspread-legged\u201d New York Times Book Review portrait. Of course he didn\u2019t; it mirrored his self-superiority perfectly. Germaine Greer<\/a> thought Arbus\u2019 photo of her was an \u201cundeniably bad picture\u201d and called her work \u201cunoriginal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Criticism aside, Arbus\u2019 unsentimental photographs earned her two Guggenheim fellowships and sparked long friendships with Richard Avedon<\/a> and Jay Gold<\/a>. An exhibition at MoMA in 1967, just four years before her death, presented her work alongside Lee Friedlander<\/a> and Garry Winogrand<\/a>. Her first major retrospective at MoMA was exhibited one year after her death\u2014the same year she was the first photographer to be included in the Venice Biennale. She was going strong in her last years, and her daughter Doon wrote, \u201cHer suicide seems neither inevitable nor spontaneous, neither perplexing nor intelligible.\u201d In other words, why?<\/p>\n

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An installation view of \u201cCataclysm: The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited,\u201d at David Zwirner, Los Angeles. Photo by Elon Schoenholz, courtesy David Zwirner<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today, David Zwirner and Fraenkel Gallery in L.A. are showing \u201cCataclysm: The Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited,\u201d an exhibition of 113 photographs that commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Arbus\u2019s 1972 posthumous retrospective at MoMA. It\u2019s the first major survey of her work in L.A. in over 20 years. The title, \u201cCataclysm,\u201d refers to the differences in opinions about Arbus\u2019s work. Some people have praised her unusual images, like documentaries of everyday life. Others, like Susan Sontag<\/a>, felt they lacked compassion and that Arbus wanted \u201cto violate her own innocence, to undermine her sense of being privileged.\u201d Sontag felt that these photos of the sexual underworld and genetic freaks never showed their emotional distress. \u201cThe photographs of deviates and real freaks do not accent their pain but, rather, their detachment and autonomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arbus herself said that she wanted to show the dignity of people. The viewer can clearly see the difficulties these people live with every day of their life. Their infirmities are undeniable, as are their freakish displays in carnival acts for all to gape at. Arbus chose another view\u2014the bizarre as a real person, just as the subjects had a desire to be seen as normal. Arbus gave them that opportunity, and in turn, dignified them. She did create a lot of uproar and controversy around her work, which I imagine she probably enjoyed. Controversy draws a lot of attention.<\/p>\n

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Diane Arbus, Tattooed man at a carnival, MD<\/em>, 1970. \u00a9 The Estate of Diane Arbus<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is to Arbus\u2019s credit that she kept photographing these people, often befriending them. She remained friends with the \u201cJewish giant,\u201d Eddie Carmel<\/a>, throughout her life, admiring him for never complaining about his condition due to an inoperable pituitary gland tumor. A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y.<\/i>, which she photographed the year before she died, shows Carmel towering over his diminutive parents, hunched over in a room too small for him, straining to have a conversation. Another subject was Mexican Dwarf in His Hotel Room in N.Y.C.<\/i> The man sports a fedora and groomed mustache, naked except for a draped towel, looking unapologetically into the camera. That these photos provoke and stir us in so many different ways seems to have been Arbus\u2019s intent. The late New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl<\/a> was one of her admirers. \u201cHer greatness, a fact of experience, remains imperfectly understood.\u201d<\/p>\n

A wonderful book, Diane Arbus Documents<\/i>, published by David Zwirner Books along with Fraenkel, is now available. In it is a treasure trove of seventy documents, including articles, criticism and essays from 1967 to the present and pages from her notebooks, with many of her idea lists: \u201cThe Secret People, man who swallows dust, chess midget, magicians secrets,\u201d and many more pages in her indelible handwriting.<\/p>\n

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Diane Arbus, Four people at a gallery opening, N.Y.C. 1968 \u00a9 The Estate of Diane Arbus<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are stories about her life that are as controversial as her photographs, like the possibly incestuous relationship with her brother, as well as her sexual forays. But to talk about her private life alongside her work\u2014or the work of any original artist\u2014is a disservice to their craft, devotion and professionalism. Now we even have a published book of Joan Didion<\/a>\u2019s therapy sessions; her meticulous notes were certainly not for the public. She didn\u2019t revise those sentences as she did with all of the work she published. She worked hard at her sentences, just as Arbus did with her camera.<\/p>\n

However, we might feel about an artist\u2019s work, whether we like it or not, that attention still belongs to the work itself. If we give Arbus the kind of long attention she gave to her photographs, we could see past our reactions into observation. To go past the surface and sustain interest\u2014that is what all important work demands, and therein lies appreciation. It\u2019s the least we can do.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/b>Cataclysm: The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited<\/b><\/a>\u201d is showing at David Zwirner\u2019s 606 N Western Avenue, L.A., with Fraenkel Gallery through June 21, 2025. It coincides with \u201c<\/b>Diane Arbus: Constellation<\/b><\/a>,\u201d an exhibition of 450 images that debuted at LUMA Arles in May 2023 and opens at New York\u2019s Park Avenue Armory on June 5, 2025.<\/b><\/p>\n

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