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A new exhibition opens dedicated to the unsettling photography of Diane Arbus at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Her pictures achieved fame and notoriety for their seemingly dispassionate and unflinching depiction of the ordinary and the extraordinary in Fifties, Sixties and Seventies culture and urban American life:
Her 'Untitled' series caused particular fuss:
Her pictures achieved fame and notoriety for their seemingly dispassionate and unflinching depiction of the ordinary and the extraordinary in Fifties, Sixties and Seventies culture and urban American life:
The V&As major exhibition this autumn is 'Diane Arbus Revelations'. Arbus is the legendary New York photographer whose work captured 1950s and 1960s America and transformed the art of photography. The exhibition is the largest retrospective of her work ever assembled and is the first international Arbus exhibition for over 30 years.
The exhibition consists of nearly 200 of the artist's most significant photographs. Prints are drawn from major public and private collections throughout the world and include many images that have never been exhibited publicly. Among the works on display are such iconic images as 'Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967' and 'A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. 1966'. Benefiting from new research, the exhibition also reveals the artist's methodology and intellectual influences through an innovative presentation of contact sheets, cameras, letters, notebooks, and other writings, as well as books and ephemera from Arbus's personal library.
Mark Jones, the director of the V&A, said: “Diane Arbus changed the face of photography with her powerful and moving photographs which captured 1950s and 1960s America. She has had a profound influence on photographers ever since and on the way we look at our fellow human beings. This is a long overdue retrospective which shows her work is as compelling as ever.”
Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was born in New York City and found most of her subjects there. She was a photographer primarily of people she discovered in the metropolis and its environs. Her “contemporary anthropology” - portraits of couples, children, carnival performers, nudists, middle-class families, transvestites, people on the street, zealots, eccentrics, and celebrities - stands as an allegory of postwar America and an exploration of the relationship between appearance and identity, illusion and belief, theatre and reality.
For Arbus, photography was a medium that tangled with the facts. Many of her subjects face the camera implicitly aware of their collaboration in the portrait-making process. In her photographs, the self-conscious encounter between photographer and subject becomes a central drama of the picture.
The exhibition consists of nearly 200 of the artist's most significant photographs. Prints are drawn from major public and private collections throughout the world and include many images that have never been exhibited publicly. Among the works on display are such iconic images as 'Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967' and 'A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. 1966'. Benefiting from new research, the exhibition also reveals the artist's methodology and intellectual influences through an innovative presentation of contact sheets, cameras, letters, notebooks, and other writings, as well as books and ephemera from Arbus's personal library.
Mark Jones, the director of the V&A, said: “Diane Arbus changed the face of photography with her powerful and moving photographs which captured 1950s and 1960s America. She has had a profound influence on photographers ever since and on the way we look at our fellow human beings. This is a long overdue retrospective which shows her work is as compelling as ever.”
Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was born in New York City and found most of her subjects there. She was a photographer primarily of people she discovered in the metropolis and its environs. Her “contemporary anthropology” - portraits of couples, children, carnival performers, nudists, middle-class families, transvestites, people on the street, zealots, eccentrics, and celebrities - stands as an allegory of postwar America and an exploration of the relationship between appearance and identity, illusion and belief, theatre and reality.
For Arbus, photography was a medium that tangled with the facts. Many of her subjects face the camera implicitly aware of their collaboration in the portrait-making process. In her photographs, the self-conscious encounter between photographer and subject becomes a central drama of the picture.
Her 'Untitled' series caused particular fuss:
Notable among her late works are the images from her 'Untitled' series, made at residences for people with mental disabilities between 1969 and 1971. In 1970, Arbus made a portfolio of original prints entitled ‘A box of ten photographs’, which was meant to be the first in a series of limited editions of her work.
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