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 | | Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph by Doon Arbus (Editor), Marvin Israel (Editor), Diane Arbus (Photographer) ISBN-10: 9780893816940 ISBN-10: 0-89381-694-9 ISBN-13: 9780893816940 ISBN-13: 978-0-89381-694-0 Paperback 1997-03-30 Aperture Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description New technology has made possible this lustrous new printing from all new film. These landmark images now have a clarity and depth not achievable in earlier editions. Text by Diane Arbus. Edited by Marvin Israel and Doon Arbus. Paperback, 9.25 x 11 in./182 pgs | ||
Amazon.com Review Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph was originally published in 1972, one year after the artist's death, in conjunction with a retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art. Edited and designed by Arbus's daughter, Doon, and her friend and colleague, painter Marvin Israel, the monograph contains eighty of her most masterful photos. The images in this newly published edition, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the collection's original publication, were printed from new three-hundred-line-screen duotone film, allowing for startlingly clear reproduction. The impact of the collection is heightened by the introduction, which contains excerpts of audio tapes in which Arbus discusses her experiences as a photographer and her feelings about the often bizarre nature of her subjects. Diane Arbus's work has indelibly impacted modern visual sensibilities, evidenced by the intensely personal moments captured in this powerful group of photographs. | ||
Reviews | ||
Exactly what I expected. . . I bought this book as a birthday gift for my twenty-one year old niece. She is a photographer who would very much like to take photographs professionally. I read about Diane Arbus in a news story because there was a movie which was recently released into theaters, which gave a fictional account of her life. She seemed like a very strong woman, with a lot of the same tastes as my niece. When I got the book it was wrapped, and I was a little disappointed. But when I gave it to her, I had a chance to look through it. The photographs are top-notch, and striking. Arbus' subject matter and composition are striking. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in photography. | ||
"Cast A Cold Eye On Life, On Death. Horseman, Pass By!" Epitaph of W.B. Yeats It is not overstating the case to say that creating these photographs cost Diane Arbus her life, her suicide followed soon after they were assembled. When you study them, (and you study them, you don't look at them), you quickly understand why. Arbus was a brittle and emotionally volatile woman long before taking these haunting images, the product of a privileged upbringing who cut her teeth in the world of fashion photography, making perfect-looking people look even more perfect. Having refined her technical skills she ventured into the opposite side of that world, seeking out the people society hid and desperately tried to forget. Arbus said famously that most of us live in fear of a traumatic disaster while her subjects had already endured theirs and were, in a sense, aristocrats as a consequence - free from the fear of being unwanted - secure in the knowledge that they most certainly were unwanted. Arbus was so obsessed with presenting unadulterated reality that she never cropped her photos, indeed, the "live area" of the prints goes beyond the photo and includes some of the film's border - to prove the picture wasn't cropped. She dove into the dark side like an obsessive child at a circus freak show, nothing was disturbing enough to satisfy her and even the commonplace became bizarre by the time she was done with it. Arbus was passionate about photographing the mentally retarded, but giants, transsexuals, twins, triplets, skinheads, nudists and other bits of social flotsam and jetsam lured her as well. Whether it was a boy holding hand grenades or a teenage couple looking like creepy miniaturized adults, Diane Arbus gravitated for the slice of humanity certain to engender revulsion. Her genius lay in the ability to bring nothing to the proceedings, she approached her subjects on their own terms. Because she did this, the subjects did not "rise" to meet the camera, they remained fixed in their personal nightmares. This made for profound, well-crafted photographs. Arbus didn't see beauty or pathos in her subjects, simply their reality. She invited us to behold what we dread and honor the dignity of her subjects. We are able to do that because we are more or less healthy, and because we can close the book when it becomes too painful; she could not. Every Arbus photograph is a self-portrait; every lost, hideous freak was Diane Arbus looking in the mirror. For the most part it seems that the people in her pictures survived her completely unsentimental scrutiny, she did not. What's more unsettling is that the popularity of these pictures gave rise to a wave of young copycat photographers who thought it was "cool" to photograph the disadvantaged, disabled, and mentally ill. The copycats never understood that for it to be art you have to care, you have to get involved. Arbus got too involved. | ||
You Must Change Your Life I first came across "An Aperture Monograph" by accident, many years ago. The images were astonishing, and when I later read Susan Sontag's famous essay, I immediately recognized the photographer she was referring to. Arbus' images are unforgettable, and do not diminish in power with time. Wisely, those in control of her estate have not released any of these works as posters, t-shirts, or other consumer items -- you have to buy the book or attend an exhibit if you want to see them. It's possible that the artist's sensibility is so powerful that even with repeated viewing, the photographs would retain their power to surprise. The exhibit "A Family Album" (currently at the Portland Museum of Art) contains several of Arbus' proof sheets. They demonstrate that Arbus (like many photographers) took many shots of the same subject, in similar poses, before choosing the one image that expressed what she wished to convey. What she was searching for was not so much a dwarf, a transvestite, twins, or any other subject, but her own artistic vision. Sometimes these are unhappy people in opulent surroundings, or people we might think should be miserable and hopeless, conveying a strange sense of command. It would be a trite observation to say that each of these photographs implies a "story" behind the subject. Any photograph can do that. We are, of course, curious about them. Why do so many of the couples seem distant from each other? What is the older man doing with the boy on the park bench? Others are deliberately suggestive: the nude couple in the forest clearly evokes Adam and Eve; the flower girl at a wedding, a fairy princess emerging from the mist. What saves them from appearing posed or artificial (which they certainly were) is Arbus' ability to give the simultaneous impression that these were candid snapshots. This multi-level presence is the mark of a true artist, in total control of her medium. The book concludes with several untitled photographs taken at a home for the developmentally disabled. The first of these shows two elderly women, the first couple in the book who seemed truly present with each other, and happy. The final photograph, of a masked woman leading a group through a field, suggests nothing less than the progress of civilization itself. Arbus' work forces the viewer to look at the world and themselves more deeply. The most apt description is from Rilke's poem, Torso of an Archaic Apollo: "...nor would this star have shaken the shackles off, bursting with light, until there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life." | ||
Our World in the Eyes of Diane Arbus A rather interesting, yet democratic photographer, Diane Arbus was an individual who was never afraid. She was a motivational and influential photographer whose life possessed no limits. Her subject matter was unique in that the pictures she took were on the abnormalities of life. These subjects centered mostly on freaks such as midgets, drag queens, giants, hookers, nudists, and drugees. Taking pictures such as these shows that she was a person who was never afraid to display the irregularities of life to the world around us. Diane Arbus lived life one day, one moment at a time. In this book, I get the feeling that her pictures show a meaning in the way she captured life, not just focusing on the photograph alone. Her subjects depicted on each page makes the viewer wonder how she got herself as well as her subjects in that position. Were they cooperative or not? Did she tell them to strike a pose or did they do it on their own? Each of her pictures in the book have a story behind it and some would seem more interesting than others. From her book, I see that the significance of her life and her photography is through this quote "The thing that's most important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way." | ||
Very Intriguing! The photography of Diane Arbus has always intrigued me. Her photographs are beautiful to me not because of the composition or lighting or any tools a photographer might use. They intrigue me because of her subject matter and even more so because of the intentions behind her subject matter. She takes pictures of people that are not considered beautiful, people that are "freaks" or "weirdos", or in some way different. She wants the viewer to identify with her subject in some way. In a way she takes the ugly, the thing that you're afraid to look at on the street and forces you to look at it and beyond that see it as art. She is "not evading facts, not evading what it really looks like". I agree with her purpose. It is best to show thing as they really are and to photograph something familiar or something often looked at is sort of boring to me. For her, taking pictures was not about the final image - because she believed that anything you plan never turns out the way you intend anyways - but it was about the experience. It was about learning and making connections with her subjects. This was interesting to me because I never thought of photography that way. Mostly when I photograph I am so concerned with the final product, but now I realize that I actually enjoy the process of taking the pictures and dislike the developing. So I see photography in the same way, it is some how meditative and the actual action of photographing helps me release a certain kind of creative energy that I harbor. | ||