Outsiders

Idealists, outsiders, and those brave enough to be themselves, as depicted by visionary photographers and filmmakers including Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin, reveal another America. A visual tour through life at the margins in the United States from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, Outsiders highlights the work of iconic photographers and filmmakers who profoundly changed the image of American culture. Kenneth Anger, Diane Arbus, Shirley Clarke, Nan Goldin, Danny Lyon, Garry Winogrand, and their contemporaries challenged rigid postwar society with their powerful films and photographs. Lyon’s travels with Chicago biker gangs and Arbus’s swordswallowers form a dramatic counterpoint to a trove of midcentury images from Casa Susanna, a community of cross-dressers enjoying country life en femme. Outsiders captures diverse and significant subcultures and interests, united by each subject’s will to determine his or her own identity. Accompanying the images, essays by curators and critics explore American underground cinema, street photography, the distinct countercultures of New York and Los Angeles, and the spectacle of everyday living in a time of political and cultural turmoil.

Sophie Hackett is the associate curator, photography; Jim Shedden is the manager of publishing; and Stephanie Smith is chief curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Katherine A. Bussard is the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at Princeton University Art Museum. Martha Kirszenbaum is the director and curator of Fahrenheit, Los Angeles. Tess Takahashi is an independent writer specializing in media arts.