His comments about the curation and presentation are not about the work, but he does leave out the fact that the Arbus estate (Doon) is very controlling as far as presentation is concerned. Doon has not allowed anyone to take any photos of the show, nor does she want her mother's work to be grouped by subject or in chronological order.
You're more than proving my point about the fact that his opinions about both Arbus and the show are uninformed. Honestly, you're an art critic reviewing a show, shouldn't you start by doing your homework and try to find out if there are special provisions defining the manner in which the works are presented, either made by the artist or by the artist's heirs? Shouldn't that just be basic? If you think so, would you call competent a critic that writes (emphasis mine) "Despite their volume and scope, reflecting several periods of the artist’s development, the prints are displayed in no particular order,
neither chronological nor thematic."
So, contrary to what you say, he's not "leaving out" the fact that Doon does not want her mother's work "to be grouped by subject or in chronological order," he did not know about it. But as a critic, should his job be to know about it?
Another example? He states that "Her “freak” photographs of disabled, disfigured, and disenfranchised people she ambushed with a camera in asylums and hospitals were morally challenged when she made them between the late 1950s and early ’70s...". Fact is, these photographs were made between 1969 and 1971. A critic should know that.
The article is filled with such aberrations, mixed with ridiculous assertions that say nothing about Arbus' photographs but essentially show that he doesn't like them and doesn't have a clue as to what she was about.
Please clarify, what is it that the critic wrote about Arbus that has you so incensed? I don't say that I agree with what he has said, but I am unsure about why you think he knows nothing about Arbus, her work or photography in general?
Here's one essential example:
The result feels like a real-life doomscroll, where untitled photos of unnamed people with disabilities captured with deer-in-the-headlights expressions on their faces appear right next to handsome, well-composed actors and writers such as Jayne Mansfield, Mae West, Norman Mailer, and Germaine Greer.
He's totally missing the point that for Arbus all people are the same — differences are only social constructs, so it makes perfect sense to have ordinary people next to Jayne Mansfield. They're no different.
More importantly, he's totally missing the point that for Arbus, part of the photographic quest is about understanding identity, and that for her, part of identity is also about some type of
performance. Performing for the camera or performing for yourself alone at home on your sofa, there's no difference.
And it's all very honest. There's nothing insincere about it. On the contrary. I think that that's the part that fascinated her: how a natural part of human nature it is, even if ambiguous and contradictory it is to be
in some way performing in order to assert your identity. But they're all performing, in some way: the kid with the grenade, the people photographed in the park, the Jewish couple dancing, the transvestites (interestingly, they are often photographed by her just before or after performance, at that moment when they are performing but not pretending). This is the reason why she didn't do street photography with people unaware of her presence, like Winogrand. She wanted people to look at her, to know that there was a camera looking at them, hoping to capture that moment of ambiguity.
All this is, to me, precisely what's so fascinating about attending a Diane Arbus exhibition (note that I did not see this one, but did see the much smaller one that came to the Montreal Museum of Art last year). You don't say "Hey! Mae West! Cool! What's she doing next to these transvestites?". You start looking, going from one to the other, the famous and the "nobody", and start seeing what she saw, or rather what she was trying to see: the complexity of human nature, the ambiguous nature of identity and performance.
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