Diane Arbus – författare

Known for her evocative portraits, Diane Arbus is a pivotal figure in American postwar photography. Undeniably striking, Arbus’s black-and-white photographs capture a unique gaze. Criticized as well as lauded for her photographs of people deemed “outsiders,” Arbus continues to attract a diversity of opinions surrounding her subjects and practice. Critics and writers have described her work as “sinister” and “appalling” as well as “revelatory,” “sincere,” and “compassionate.” In the absence of Arbus’s own voice, art criticism and cultural shifts have shaped the language attributed to her work.Organized in eleven sections that focus on major exhibitions and significant events in Arbus’s life, as well as on her practice and her subjects, the seventy facsimiles of articles and essays––an archive by all accounts––trace the discourse on Diane Arbus, contextualizing her hugely successful oeuvre. Also with an annotated bibliography of more than six hundred entries and a comprehensive exhibition history, Documents serves as an important resource for photographers, researchers, art historians, and art critics, in addition to students of art criticism and the interested reader alike.

When Diane Arbus died in 1971 at the age of forty-eight, she was already a significant influence—even something of a legend—among serious photographers, although only a relatively small number of her most important pictures were widely known at the time. The publication of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph in 1972— along with the posthumous retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art—offered the general public its first encounter with the breadth and power of her achievements. The response was unprecedented. The monograph of eighty photographs was edited and designed by the painter Marvin Israel, Diane Arbus’s friend and colleague, and by her daughter Doon Arbus. Their goal in making the book was to remain as faithful as possible to the standards by which Diane Arbus judged her own work and to the ways in which she hoped it would be seen. Universally acknowledged as a classic, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph is a timeless masterpiece with editions in five languages and remains the foundation of her international reputation. Nearly half of a century has done nothing to diminish the riveting impact of these pictures or the controversy they inspire. Arbus’s photographs penetrate the psyche with all the force of a personal encounter and, in doing so, transform the way we see the world and the people in it. This is the first edition in which the image separations were created digitally; the files have been specially prepared by Robert J. Hennessey using prints by Neil Selkirk.

A new collection of photographs by Diane Arbus illuminates her singular ability to enter private worlds. Diane Arbus: Sanctum Sanctorum Diane Arbus: Sanctum Sanctorum brings together forty-five photographs made in private places across New York, New Jersey, California, and London between 1961 and 1971. Through her singular combination of intelligence, charisma, intuition, and courage, Diane Arbus (1923–1971) was frequently invited into personal realms seldom seen by strangers. Though made in intimate settings, the photographs collected in this volume convey no sense of intrusion or trespass—instead, they reveal an unspoken exchange between photographer and subject, a moment of recognition in which confidences emerge freely and without judgment. Arbus’s desire to know people embraced a vast spectrum of humanity. Her subjects featured in Sanctum Sanctorum include debutantes, nudists, celebrities, aspiring celebrities, socialites, transvestites, babies, widows, circus performers, lovers, female impersonators, and a blind couple in their bedroom. Through a fresh consideration of little-known photographs among works that may be more familiar, this publication invites viewers to discover aspects of even well-known images that have previously gone unnoticed.