Word: arbus
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...MENTION the name of Diane Arbus on a street corner in Manhattan, you are likely to hear murmuring-- "Oh, the freak photographer" or, "Her photos are strange," followed by an uncertain "What do you think of her stuff...
Diane (pronounced "Dee-ann") Arbus is legendary for her photographs of freaks, dwarfs, giants and even "ordinary" people in unflattering poses. Contained in those pictures is a statement about how grotesque all of life is, not just the subjects photographed. But with the publication of Patricia Bosworth's biography the question of why, what compelled Arbus to hunt for life it the world of freaks's for the first time explored. Unfortunately, readers fascinated with this tortured figure will have to wait until another study for a satisfactory answer...
...Diene Arbus begins with the photographer's Fairy tale birth in March of 1923 into a world of wealth and fashion. Arbus's father, David Nemerov, headed. New York's extravagant Russeks department store, reputed to be the place where millionaires bought gifts to lavish on their "kept" women. Her mother, the lovely Gertrude Russeks, was the daughter of the store's founder. Forever ill at ease with the over-indulgent life style her parents provided, the young Diane would force herself to "stand on the window ledge of her parents' apartment in the San Remo, 11 stories above Central...
...girl, Arbus never seemed to live in the real world, as Bosworth repeatedly emphasizes. To her, "the real world was always a fantasy". While growing up, she was unaware of her Jewishness because she was surrounded by it. Later, as a fledgling photographer, she would cover the American Nazi Party in Yorkville and listen to the anti-Semitic diatribe. "She did not react; she just listened intensely--watching, watching. And she arranged to photograph the Nazis. And they were charmed...
Similar stories of steep appreciation can be told about the work of almost every other major 20th century photographer: Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, W. Eugene Smith, Diane Arbus and Imogen Cunningham, among the dead; Harry Callahan, Frederick Sommer, Paul Caponigro, and Fashion Photographers Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, among the living. The great pictures of the 19th century are more expensive still. Last May two albums containing 100 early California and Oregon scenes by Carleton E. Watkins were sold for $198,000. "A print is amusing at $100," quips one art dealer...