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DIANE ARBUS
By Michelle Kwan Matt Miles Amy HornerKarkiu Tang
Personal Life
Born in New York
Married to Allan Arbus
Two daughters (Doon & Amy
Arbus)
Divorced afterwards
Career Life
Fashion Photography Business
Studied Fine Art Photography
Studied Photography with
Berenice Abbot & Lisette Model
In 1960s, taught Photography
Death
Committed suicide in 1971
Age 48
“She came to me and said, ‘I can’t photograph,’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And she said, ‘Because what I want to photograph, I can’t photograph.’ ” She told Diane to go home and figure out what it was she really wanted to take pictures of. “And the next session she came to me and she said, ‘I want to photograph what is evil.’ And that was it.” – Lisette Model, Viennese-born photographer
Fascinated by risk taking Embraced the New York City art world’s life-
on-the-edge attitudes about money, social status and sexual freedom
Pursued same thrill in photography “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”
In the 1950s and early ’60s, she was using a 35-millimeter camera and natural lighting
Showed the influence of street photography Favoured blurred surfaces and grainy textures Didn’t conform to the tidy look of mainstream
commercial photographs Around 1962 she switched to a 2 1/4 format
camera Created sharper images with brilliant detail She wanted “to see the difference between flesh
and material, the densities of different kinds of things: air and water and shiny.”
Describe the focus of Arbus’ work in 3 words:
Taboo
Unconventional
Beauty
“I hear myself saying, ‘How terrific.’ ... I don’t mean I wish I looked like that. I don’t mean I wish my children looked like that. I don’t mean in my private life I want to kiss you. But I mean that’s amazingly, undeniably something.”
Critics of Diane Arbus• Arbus receives massive praise for
her work after her death.
• However some critics found her work to be disturbing, even repellent.
Negative Attention Argues that Arbus’s
work is based on ‘distance, on privilege’
The intentions were more cruel then tender.
Angered at the lack of political engagement.
Believed that the subjects had no value.
Positive Attention
Sandra Phillips believed that
“She was a great humanist photographer who was at the forefront of a new kind of photographic art.”
Changing Ideologies
Images that represented sexually ambiguous figures and motherhood.
Challenged dominant social and ideological conventions of the late 1950’s and 60’s
Final Thoughts – What’s your Opinion?
If photography is telling a story of a person/ object.
There isn’t one picture of Arbus’s that doesn’t evoke an emotion from its audience.
She was a trailblazer. She did that she could
do, to exploit conflicts in society artistically.
Lessons from Diane Arbus
From:“Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph”
(1972)By Doon Arbus, Diane Arbus
Lessons from Diane Arbus
1. Go places you have never been
“Like a blind date”
“Have absolutely no control on the
scene”
Lessons from Diane Arbus
2. The camera is a license to enter the
lives of others
“Camera is the license”
“Show interest to your subject, pay respect”
Explain you are a photographer
Lessons from Diane Arbus
3. Realize you can never truly understand
the world from your subjects eyes
“ the gap between intention and effect”
“ Something is ironic in the world and it has to
do with the fact that what you intend never
comes out like you intended it”
Different perspectives
Lessons from Diane Arbus
4. Create specific photographs
Be selective
Highlight of the scene
Lessons from Diane Arbus
5. Adore your subjects
Be compassionate to the subjects
Respect subjects
The power of distortion the lens can
have
Lessons from Diane Arbus
6. Gain inspiration from reading
Creativity and insights often come from
outside sources
Diversify sources
Lessons from Diane Arbus
7. Utilize textures to add meaning to
your photographs
“Grains: a kind of tapestry of all these
little dots and everything would be
translated into this medium of dots”
Experiment freely
Lessons from Diane Arbus
8. Take bad photos
“Funny mistakes”
“You haven’t tried before”
Lessons from Diane Arbus
9. Sometimes your best photos
aren’t immediately apparent (to you)
“ I’ve gotten to like it better and better
and now I’m secretly sort of nutty about
it.”
First impression isn’t everything
Lessons from Diane Arbus
10. Don’t arrange others, arrange
yourself
“I work from awkwardness. By that I
mean I don’t like to arrange things if I
stand in front of something, instead of
arranging it, I arrange myself”
Lessons from Diane Arbus
11. Get over the fear of
photographing by getting to know
your subjects
“I had to ask to photograph them.”
Lessons from Diane Arbus
12. Your subjects are more
important than the pictures
Connections with your subjects
Your experience
Discussion
Would you describe her style as documentary or portraiture?
Do you think she misrepresents people?
Does the way she represents people contradicts her aims?
Bibliography
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/02/diane-arbuss-photography
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-fresh-look-at-diane-arbus-99861134/
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jul/26/diane-arbus-photography-sideshow
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arbus-writer-susan-sontag-with-her-son-david-nyc-al00192/text-summary