What makes Diane Arbus so good?

[BobNewYork]

Before reading this thread I would not have classified Diane Arbus as "important". The range and strength of opinions, (notwithstanding those of a seemingly entirely personal nature) have clearly proved me wrong.

My own feelings on Arbus' work have been that she tended to exploit "freaks." I never found any compassion in them. Someone earlier suggested that she may have considered herself a "freak". If that were so, many of her images strike me as someone saying "I'm not the only one. Looks at these people - they're freaks too" - hardly compassionate. I think of her famous photograph of the twin girls in the park and see a deliberate attempt to present two young, albeit not particularly attractive kids as "weird."

Now, having said that I dislike her photographs, she has clearly had an impact on me. Those images, which I dislike, have caused me to have a relatively strong, personal opinion of an individual whom I have never met and of whom I know little. That, perhaps, is a true sign of a strong artist.

Bob H

 

[Jim Chinn]

I have gone between like and dislike on Arbus. Over the years I have grown to like the images. Why I like them I am not quite sure, but I pull down my copy of her monograph from time to time and am still captivated.

IIRC she suffered from some level of depression. I think I read that in different articles and reviews of her work. I think she saw herself somewhat as a freak, someone who did not fit into the narrow definitions of normal and sane as defined in the late 50s and 60s. I don't think she saw herself as exploitive but identified with her subjects as people who fell outside the margins and norms of Eisenhower America. I think she may have identified most closely with the Downs Syndrome patients. I find those images the least exploitive and quite beautiful. I think her identification with the patients was probably so intense releasing them for publication was just to personal.

Just as an aside, I had a photography instructor who was a tremendous teacher and artist. He told me that some of the most powerful and emotional images a photographer makes is never seen by anyone else. I think this may be the case with Down Syndrome patients.

 

[smieglitz]

I like Arbus and find her photographs interesting, not exploitive. Her subjects are "other" and that makes them automatically interesting to me to some degree.

Would you rather photograph suits or freaks?

She done good.

 

[Stefan Rohner]

I am new here, hello to all here in the forum...

"freak´s" what is a freak? there are interesting faces/characters on our planet earth, then there are the average boring ones... thats all. she just chose the interesting ones.

best Stefan

P.S. when register, I love 35mm and I love 120mm, why I have to fix myself to a format?

 

[SuzanneR]

I am new here, hello to all here in the forum...

"freak´s" what is a freak? there are interesting faces/characters on our planet earth, then there are the average boring ones... thats all. she just chose the interesting ones.

best Stefan

P.S. when register, I love 35mm and I love 120mm, why I have to fix myself to a format?

Welcome Stefan... there's a "multi format" option. Or at least there was, for those who dabble in more than one format.

It's interesting, over time, the people she photographed, the difficult to define freaks, who seemed so on the edge of society in he pictures (even if they weren't in real life) have become much more visibly "mainstream" today.

 

[viridari]

The best art doesn't make a statement so much as ask a question. It acts as a catalyst to unlock the things that we already know inside of us but have not been directly confronted with.

Arbus' work is generally unflattering and perhaps exploitive. But the thoughts and feelings that her work stirs up make many people uncomfortable, not just with her work but often with themselves.

Personally I think her work is wonderful in that sense. She's not showing us a beautiful world. She's showing us a very tough world, a very unfair one, a world that polite people in her time would rather have kept hidden and never spoken of openly. In that context, it makes sense (to me) that her depiction of her subjects should make the viewers feel uncomfortable.

Has she been an influence on my work? Absolutely. I don't know if I would have shot this image without having seen her work.