Revelations : Diane Arbus - Hardcover

Author

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224071831 ISBN 13: 9780224071833

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2003

Synopsis

Between 1954 and her suicide in 1971 Diane Arbus took some 150,000 photographs. Her work was first published in 1960. She was close to Richard Avedon and studied under Alexey Brodovitch. Her posthumous retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1972 showed some 150 portraits upon which her reputation was built and has been sustained ever since. Her subjects ranged from anonymous strangers found on the street to celebrities, freaks, circus people and nudists. They are some of the most daring photographs ever made. The 1972 MoMA catalogue has never been out of print and has sold unparalleled quantities. The great retrospective drawn from her entire career has until now remained unpublished. This is a milestone book for which we have been waiting years. The book reproduces two hundred full-page duotones of Diane Arbus photographs spanning her entire career, many of them never before seen. It also includes an essay, 'The Question of Belief' by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and 'In the Darkroom', a discussion of Arbus's printing techniques by Neil Selkirk, the only person authorised to print her photographs since her death. A 104-page Chronology by Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator of the San Francisco Mueum of Modern Art show, and Doon Arbus, the artist's eldest daughter, illustrated by more than three hundred additional images and composed mainly of previously unpublished excerpts from the artist's letters, notebooks and other writings, amounts to a kind of autobiography. An Afterword by Doon Arbus precedes biographical entries on the photographer's friends and colleagues by Jeff L. Rosenheim, associate curator of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These texts help to illuminate the meaning of Diane Arbus's controversial and astonishing vision.

About this title

Review:

Muscle men, midgets, socialites, circus performers and asylum inmates: in the 1950s and '60s, photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971) cast her strong eye on them all, capturing them as no one else could. Her documentary-style photos of society's margin-walkers were objective and reverential, while she often portrayed so-called normal people looking far more freakish than the freaks. Her powerful work was well-received in its day. Arbus received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1963 and 1966 and was included in a major show at MOMA in 1967. But her work entered the realm of near-myth after her 1971 suicide.

Posthumously cast as everything from patron saint of the underdog to a crass exploiter of the mentally challenged, Arbus has curiously never had a large retrospective until the show Revelations was organized by Arbus' family and SF MOMA. The accompanying catalogue is an oversized, sumptuous, beautifully printed tome. It includes all of the artist's iconic photographs as well as many that have never been publicly exhibited, including many pages of contact sheets, journal entries, and family snapshots. This work is so strong, it's mind-blowing. The giant in his apartment with his parents looks absolutely regal, his parents sad and confused. Are those crazy people always so happy? And what to make of this moment of extreme tenderness between a dominatrix and her client? This is a book worth hours of your time. --Mike McGonigal

From the Inside Flap:

Diane Arbus redefined the concerns and the range of the art she practiced. Her bold subject matter and photographic approach have established her preeminence in the world of the visual arts. Her gift for rendering strange those things we consider most familiar, and uncovering the familiar within the exotic, enlarges our understanding of ourselves.

Diane Arbus Revelations affords the first opportunity to explore the origins, scope, and aspirations of what is a wholly original force in photography. Arbus’s frank treatment of her subjects and her faith in the intrinsic power of the medium have produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Presenting many of her lesser-known or previously unpublished photographs in the context of the iconic images reveals a subtle yet persistent view of the world.

The book reproduces two hundred full-page duotones of Diane Arbus photographs spanning her entire career, many of them never before seen. It also includes an essay, “The Question of Belief,” by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and “In the Darkroom,” a discussion of Arbus’s printing techniques by Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized to print her photographs since her death. A 104-page Chronology by Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show, and Doon Arbus, the artist’s eldest daughter, illustrated by more than three hundred additional images and composed mainly of previously unpublished excerpts from the artist’s letters, notebooks, and other writings, amounts to a kind of autobiography. An Afterword by Doon Arbus precedes biographical entries on the photographer’s friends and colleagues by Jeff L. Rosenheim, associate curator of photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These texts help illuminate the meaning of Diane Arbus’s controversial and astonishing vision.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0224071831
• ISBN 13: 9780224071833
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 351