Upload
georgia-museum-of-art
View
295
Download
5
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
This brochure was produced by the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the Spencer Museum of Art, the University of Kansas, which also organized the exhibition of the same name. It was on display at the Georgia Museum of Art from June 18 to August 14, 2005.
Citation preview
Diane Arbus: Family AIbums
Born to a wealthy Jewish-American family, Diane Arbus (1923-1971)
was raised in affluent surroundings in New York City. Unlike her
famous brother, the poet Howard Nemerov, she never attended
college. At age 18 she married the aspiring photographer and actor
Allan Arbus, and during the next twenty years the couple worked as
professional photographers for fashion magazines and advertisers,
including Russek's Fifth Avenue, the chic department store owned
by Arbus s father.
As her marriage began to crumble and her husband more
seriously pursued acting, Arbus continued working for fashion and
commercial clients but also turned to a different kind of photogra-
phy. Between 1955 and 1957, she studied with Lisette Model and
began to develop a penetrating documentary vision, producing
pictures very unlike the work she was doing for advertisers. By
the 1960s, she had gained a reputation as a photographer of New
York's many subcultures. By 1967, her pictures were so admired
among the New York cognoscenti that she was one of the three
photographers invited to participate in the Museum of Modern Art's
New Documenfs show. lt launched her international reputation
and career.
What was Arbus's documentary vision? ln 1968, three years
before her suicide, Arbus wrote that she was compiling her photo-
graphs into a "family album," likening itto a "Noah's ark" and
perhaps imagining in itthe people who might be remembered and
saved in the aftermath of the tumultuous 1960s. "Family," in Arbus's
sense, consisted of people held together by all sorts of bonds. some
traditional and others alternative, and deserving of special attention.
This exhibition re-examines Arbus's never-completed project
and offers a glimpse into what such an album might have looked
like. lt assembles pictures of various kinds of familles and family
members and offers Arbus's critical, sometimes humorous, often
sympathetic viewing of fathers, mothers, children, and partners'
ln addition, it includes the contact sheets for six different portrait
sessions and reveals Arbus's working methods and selection
process as she aimed to find appropriate subjects for her ark' ln all'
Diane Arbus: Family Atbums proposes a new way to understand the
concerns and qoals of this most important American photographer'
Arbus took a wide range of pictures of mothers, a key figure in most
family albums. With good reason: mothers help secure the notion ol
"family," and by their mere presence cohere the many disparate
photographs that make up an album. The women Arbus photo-
graphed in the 1960s include some whose notoriety derived from
their status as mothers: Marguerite 0swald, the mother of Lee
Mothers
Diane Arbus. Blaze Starr at
h0me,1964. Copyright O Estate
of Diane Arbus, 1965. Esquire
Collection, Spencer Museum of
Art, the University of Kansas
Diane Arbus, Madalyn Murray
in her bedroon,1964. Copyright
O Estate of Diane Arbus, 1964.
Esquire Collection, Spencer
Museum of Art, the University oI
Kansas
Harvey 0swald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy,
and Madalyn Murray, the petitioner who successfully challenged
compulsory school prayer on behalf of her son.
ln the case of Murray, Arbus explored the famed atheist's
relationship with her two sons and to the home in which they lived,
photographing Murray on a big sofa, in her kitchen, living room,
bedroom, and outside her front door. These pictures explored
Murray's role as a mother and perhaps even suggested how the
small house became a refuge for her and her family, especially
when they were besieged by the local and national press.
0ther "mother" pictures interrogated the matriarchal de-
meanor, like that of Flora Knapp Dickinson, an Honorary Regent of
the Daughters of the American Revolution, and Mrs. T. Charlton
Henry, the noted socialite and fashion luminary. Still other photo-
graphs-of the stripper Blaze Starr, the sexy film star Mae West,
the wartime personality Tokyo Rose-explored how women, not
normally associated with motherhood, could appear more maternal
in their own domestic settings.
Fathers
Children
Diane Arbus, King and Aueen of a Senior
Citizens'Dance, N. Y C., 1970. Copyright O
Estate of Diane Arbus,1970. Esquire Collectlon,
Spencer Museum of Art, the University 0f
Ka nsas
What constituted fatherhood in the lg60s? Arbus's many pictures
of fathers, patriarchs, and famous men were made when this ques-
tion was being regularly asked. Typical of Arbus's interests and
sensibilities as a photographer, she sought out men whose claims
on fatherhood derived from different forms of authority and public
presence. Representative father figures included Bennett Cerf,
president of the publishing firm Random House; Donald Gatch, a
southern physician whose causes were receiving national attention;
the midget Andrew Batoucheff, who was married five times and per-
formed onstage as, alternately, Marilyn Monroe and Maurice
Chevalier; and the writer Norman Mailer.
The mother of two young girls, Arbus was confronted daily with the
needs. experiences, and desires of children. In addition, she often
photographed children, buttoned in the latest fashlons. for magazine
ads and spent hours dressing and posing them for her camera. As
sitters, they provided Arbus with an especially provocative and
challenging subject, at once filled with their own visions and under-
standings of a world in transition, and yet also serving as recepta-
cles for the longings and dreams of others.
Partnership is key to the bonds that hold families together, but
Arbus's desire to interrogate and chart the changing family led her
to photograph several unusual sets of partners: a married couple
who lived as nudists, a Santa Claus with his "real" wife in his "real"
home, and Lillian and Dorothy Gish, the two deeply attached sisters
who earlier in their lives had been silent film stars.
Perhaps the most difficult, yet key photographs for Arbus's album
were images of families whose bonds were more traditional. Held
together by marriage, blood, and law, these kinds of families fell
under scrutiny and were often dismissed as anachronistic by the
countercultures and alternative collectives of the '1960s. With her
camera, Arbus asked which aspects of these more traditional fami-
lies could survive. What bonds of affection could remain intact?
Diane Arbus,
Robert Evans
and his family,
1968" Copyright
@ Estate of
Diane Arbus,
1965, Esquire
Colle ction,
Spencer
Museum of Art,
the University of
Ka nsas
Partners
Families
ti:lli,ffi:.:)
What forms of community could be gleaned
from them? 0r, conversely, what final ves-
tiges of an earlier family life needed
farewell?
0ne set of previously unknown family
photographs reveals how Arbus worked
through these questions. ln late 1969, Arbus
photographed the Konrad Matthaei family in
their New York townhouse. Matthaei was a
well-known television actor and theater
owner and his family-surrounded by
celebrity and media attention-was just the
sort to which Arbus was often drawn. For
two days, she followed the family around
the townhouse, recording meals. family
arriving for holiday dinner, the children
playing with newtoys. Arbus removed
obstructing objects and positioned herself
and her subjects carefully, taking an aston-
ishing 322 photographs, roughly one every
two minutes. The contact sheets from this
session, as well as others presented in this
exhibltion, provide insight into Arbus's meth-
ods and choices as she worked toward the
idea of 'Jfamily album."
Diane Arbus, Untitled contact sheet, detail, 1969.
Matthaei Family Collection @ Marcella Hague
Matthaei Ziesmann
This brochure is produced bythe Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the Spencer Museum ofArt,
the university of Kansas. Reproduction oI Esquire photographs by Diane Arbus is authorized by the
Spencer Museum ofArtto promote the exhibition in accordance with the License granted bythe Estate
of Diane Arbus.