Diane Arbus Presentaion Notes

Slide One

SIAN

·      Diane Arbus, originally Diane Nemerov, was bought up in a wealthy family environment.

·      She is said to have felt alienated from “real life” as a child

·      This led to her becoming involved at the early age of 14 with Allan Arbus who she ended up marrying at 18, and who played a large part in her photographic career

·      Together they developed an interest in photography- Diane modeled for Allan in some fashion photography shoots before the birth of their first child

·      They then set up their own fashion business where Allan does most of the camera work with Diane fulfilling the role of artistic director.

·      After their second child however, Diane felt her role within the business was too inferior so in 1956 she ended her partnership with Allan in the business

CHLOE

·      Around 1962, Diane switched to square format from the 35mm she’d always used

·      Allan divorced her in 1969 and moved to Hollywood to become an actor, leaving Diane fully in control over the technical side of her photography

·      As this was quite new to her, Diane started photographing her family and friends as she was chronically shy

·      Not long after this, she gained access to the New Jersey clinic for mentally retarded patients to start the project Untitled

·      Due to a lack of financial security, she was forced into jobs which she had no interest in, for example, magazine work and teaching

·      She was unfortunately found dead in her bathtub at the age of 48 after a long battle with depression. Diane is rumored to have set up a camera to picture her death, however, no film was found in the camera.

Slide 2

LAUREN

·      Arbus has a very dark edge to her work, which makes it so intriguing- this may be due to the abstract subjects she choses

·      It is obvious that Arbus had a fascination with the underside of society she even admits, “they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe” when talking about ‘freaks’. Because of this abstract love for the abstract, she was often mistaken for a voyeur, which we will discuss later on.

·      Lisette Model, who taught Diane Arbus, believed Arbus to be a schizophrenic, “as all artists are schizophrenic. Diane suffered from a kind of madness caused by ‘obsessive demands that cannot be satisfied’.”

·      It is known that Arbus had trouble with depression, which isn’t a surprise when looking at her work

Slide 3

SIAN

·      As NPR's Madeleine Brand describes the Diane Arbus' famous photo, it's "a portrait of two little girls -- maybe they're seven or eight years old. They're wearing matching outfits: white tights, corduroy dresses, and thick white headbands in their dark hair. The girls stand shoulder-to-shoulder, their light eyes looking straight into the camera -- straight at us. And the more you look back at them -- the more you stare -- the more you realize how different they are from each other."

·      Arbus biographer Patricia Bosworth says the photo encapsulates the photographer's vision. "She was involved in the question of identity. Who am I and who are you? The twin image expresses the crux of that vision: normality in freakishness and the freakishness in normality."

Slide 4

CHLOE

·      Untitled is the third volume of Diane Arbus’s work- the photographs were taken at residences for the mentally retarded between 1969 and 1971 in the last years of her life. The photograph are described as showing an emotional purity which sets them apart from all her other works. At the time, she wrote “finally what I’ve been searching for”.

·      It is believed that Arbus often had sexual relationships with some of her ‘freak’ subjects.

·      “I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favourite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.”

Slide 5

LAUREN

·      In 2006,  ‘Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus’ directed by Steven Shainberg was released portraying a relationship between Arbus and one of her freak subjects

·      Here is a clip from the film…. From this clip you can see that even from a young age, Arbus remembers admiring peoples abnormalities and flaws

Slide 6

·      Arbus clearly had some deep issues, Nancy Grossman’s take on her suicide was that: (read presentation)

·      One of our ideas is that maybe, she felt so strange inside her own body, and not ‘normal’ that she surrounded herself with people that she felt she could connect with

·      She seemed to be an extremely vulnerable person and suffered badly

from depression. Also, her voyeurism towards the strange, is seen as

weird in itself because she got special enjoyment out of it, possibly

questions whether she has psychological problems her (on top of the depression.)