Diane Arbus Revelations

Manufacturer: Random House Availability: Usually ships in 3 to 6 weeks List Price:$100.00 Our Price:$63.00 Authors: Diane Arbus Description: 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

Reviews:

A glorious exhibition of Diane Arbus
The legacy of dead artists is always in the hands of others. As Doon Arbus, Diane's daughter, laments, some go way to far in "analyzing" the work of her mother. (For a particularly abominable and repulsive example of this, see Anthony Lee and John Stultz's "Diane Arbus: Family Albums".)

This gigantic Arbus exhibition was mounted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It features 200 Arbus photos, spanning her entire work and more than 300 auxillary images of her notebooks, darkroom and so on.

There are several short, informative and informed essays (unlike the aforementioned "Family Albums).

The production is gorgeous.

What is unfortunate about Arbus' work is that it is rarely explained in detail. People see Arbus' work and conclude that she really saw these weird people in the wild, so to speak. The reality is shown in fair detail here. For example, Arbus' absolute classic "Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park" is shown with a contact sheet making it clear that Arbus took the one image that showed this little boy in a freakish pose. The other 11 images show a normal young boy playing. But Arbus wanted her subjects to appear as if they were trying out for a freak show. That was her point. That's why, for example, Arbus photographed "Dominatrix embracing her client" instead of a family picnic with everyone smiling for the camera.

Arbus - and this exhibition demonstrates the point - used electronic flash and high contrast to make her subjects appear weird. Weird was Arbus' metier. You can see this again in the contact sheet from which her freakish "Boy at a parade" is taken. Arbus does not print the sprightly looking woman holding a "Support Our Boys" sign and an American flag. No, she prints the pimply faced, self-concious boy wearing a plastic straw hat, a bow tie and carrying an American flag. She prints it because the harsh strobe makes the uncomfortable boy look like a freak.

Arbus was fascinated by the unsual, including twins and triplets. She suffered from various psychological problems, possibly alcoholism and drug addiction and killed herself.

She left behind a magnificient body of work, one that too often (again, see the awful "Family Albums") is subjected to academic balderdash.

In "Dane Arbus: Revelations", Arbus the person, Arbus the photographer is presented in splendid detail. It's a marvelous work.

Jerry


Beautiful book
I had the great fortune to see Revelations in person when the show was at the MET in NYC in 2004. There is nothing like seeing actual prints in person but this gorgous book is the next best thing. The paper stock is top notch as is the binding. I proudly display this book on my coffee table for family and friends to enjoy.


Distortions
The revelations of Diane Arbus can be a business, price-wise. However, there are many of other photographers of women who produced photographs much finer. To me this book indicates Arbus as a one who employed photographs very selectively to depict a twisted and negative sight of a subject. It seemed to exploit sadness like marks deposited to go single notification and of profit. The giant portrait Jewish known good of Eddie Carmel and his the "dismayed" parents is an example of its disappointment. On page 300-301 of the reinforcement number 1 of the sheet of contact shown on page 209 is the enlarging. Obviously, it was drawn with haste before the family was ready or in position for what they thought was to be a heat, portrait of family. It was a drawn turn on the trustful one, and it does not represent really anything other but the surplus embarassant people where they should be held so that the images come. On the other hand, starting from the sheet of contact on page 164, it chose the installation most obviously conceived of the child with a grenade of hand of toy, which appears on page 104-105 and as the enlarging that it is held in frank photography of Steven on page 208. Like study by supporting a particular point of view and melancholic person and to force enough it on the naive kind of subjects to be photographed, this book can be useful. But for honest photography, there are other books.


well done retrospective for a great show
It was one of largest retrospectives of photography and the book rather much recapitulates like excavates deeply in the exits covered by the exposure. If you miss the exposure, this book is a good product of replacement. If you want to know what you saw in the exposure, it is an essential guide. Reproductions of highest quality, even in the stitched book.


A brilliant tribute to a great artist
Diane Arbus was best-known for her stark, black-and-white photographs of the outer fringes of society. She was very much of her time period, since the things she had to go outside of the lines to photograph (inter-racial couples, people with tattoos, drag queens, etc.) are now a part of every day life. I was fortunate enough to see a display of her work at the L.A. County Museum of Art, and this volume is a wonderful companion to the show. Not only are all the plates from the show included, but also copies of correspondence, pictures of her cameras, and the story of her sad, short life. In many ways, she was ahead of her time, with the un-smiling, un-flattering portraits of real people, at a time when most photography was glossy, and reality was still somewhat hidden.

Like most brilliant artists, she was troubled and was not happy with her life. She took her life at a relatively young age, before she could see the modern world, reflected from her early photographs. It is a pity, but we are lucky to have the photographs of Diane Arbus live on.


Warning! For hard-core Arbus fans only
I enjoy Diane Arbus' photos, but this book is too much for me. Her photos are only a small part of the book -- the majority of the book is a catalogue of her life. The contact sheets are quite interesting, as they reveal a lot about how she approached a subject. The rest will likely appeal only to hardcore Arbus fans.


The Monograph as Art Form
DIANE ARBUS: REVELATIONS is one of the most beautiful monographs of an artist I have ever seen or read. This over-sized, beautifully bound, highest quality paper, extraordinarily fine reproductions of photogravure, and sensitively designed and written catalogue for the touring museum exhibition of Diane Arbus Photographs is simply magnificent and well worth the rather steep price. But a state-of-the-art monograph would be of little consequence were it not about one of the most controversial and phenomenally gifted photographers of the last century. Arbus had an affinity for capturing people she encountered because they produced a source of wonder in her. Her eyes were attracted to the edges of normal appearance and anatomy where she captured luminously tender photographs of developmentally challenged fellow human beings. There are countless images of children and adults who have survived a life of 'non-normalcy' and she framed them in her camera's eye with no sense of the voyeur, but instead with a great sense of humanism. Here are portraits of giants with their parents, patients from mental institutions, carnival folk, transvestites, anatomic wonders, as well as simple twins, people she found fascinating, populated places that struck her imagination. The photogrpahs of Diane Arbus have become icons and the contributors to this volume help to propel her already praiseworthy status to that of a genius: Sandra Phillips' essay 'The Question of Belief', photographer Neil Selkirk's intimate 'In the Darkroom' (Selkirk is the only person allowed to develop prints of Arbus' output), and the beautifully conceptualized and constructed Chronology by Doon Arbus and Elisabeth Sussman bringing to us rarely seen portions of Arbus' output and thoughts - all of these are rendered in the best of taste and finest of scholarship. Finally, here is a volume that fleshes out the magnificence of the art of Diane Arbus. This bibliophile's dream of a book deserves awards and most important, deserves your attention. Highly recommended as a true collector's item.


Revealing, revalatory
I own two Arbus monographs and have lived with them for over 20 years. Many of those works are reproduced in this volume. There is a lot of talk about "the human condition" and I suppose all artists in one way or another wrestle with the notion. Arbus has always meant to me someone who seemed to reveal who we are beneath the fashion, the roles, the sex, the culture. I used one of her images as a means to illuminate a poster for a Sam Shepard play called Icarus' Mother - it was of a very young New York boy holding a toy hand grenade in a threatening way during play in Central Park - once seen never forgotten.
Nor will I forget her self portrait, naked pregnant, in this latest volume. So much. So much. This is the volume Arbus lovers have been waiting for. Printed in Germany, beautifully bound, positively packed with images, diary entries, extracts from letters, comment. A bargain.


Arbus according to Arbus
It is the catalogue for an exposure which opened this week with SFMOMA. It is also a considerable document of authority and very of little of the tomb of worship which forms part of the exposure. There is no doubt that it is a complete evaluation of the place of Arbus in the history of its medium. The first chapter of written material is erudite and completely free of the exaggeration usually foundation of concrete on Diane Arbus. Instead of that, the author reports his work to that of his various professors and influences, model of Lisette, Gary Winogrand, binds Friedlander, grinder of August, and much of others. There are many references to and of its books as the notes of others but the writing is neither superfluous nor voyeuristic. It is history of the art to its best. The choice of its photographs is complete and organized well because you would envisage of his field which has them all. No doubt that the gallery of Fraenkel close to SFMOMA had to make much with the quality of the exposure and the book. Lu him before you attend the exposure and you will learn much even if you never intended to speak about it. Coupled with the detailed chronology of its life, the images give a clear image of a character which was darkened by mythology and the rumour during 30 years. I am not a ventilator of Diane Arbus (and certainly not a detractor) but I gained much respect for it because an artist as I read it notes and the quotations about its clean function. If you seek a biography of a young artist of woman to face at the semi-twentieth century, this one is good. It complete and is not expressed the opinions of the editor with the adjulation. The only facts gratuitious which I would have omitted are the cold details of its death in the reports/ratios of the coroner at the end of the book. However I obtain the impression that it is the manner it would have liked it. It is the book which she would have written. Absent a certain purse equal to the contrary effect, this is the truth about Diane Arbus.


A Powerful Book
Thank you Doon Arbus for publishing it.


An Apt Title!
The first book I ever saw that done realize me that the photographs were more than family that the instantaneous ones were Diane Arbus: A Monograph Of Opening. During years I wondered about the woman who took these photographs and the way of which it worked... to oblige subjects to him to pose for it, with the way of which it developed and treated its film, and also about his life. The revelations provides many answers and more. Kudos with the Doon girl of DA to release this material in beautiful volume which already provided hours of explanation, and it just arrived today. The impression is immaculate and the text is astonishing with a good number of passages of the newspapers of DA, books, papers of school, letters and postcards. This book can spout out become final work on it, because it provides much more perspicacity to the its life and work then the unauthorized biography of the Eighties by Bosworth. It is a perfect book, in my opinion.



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--end of Diane Arbus Revelations