Reflections on Diane Arbus
Apr. 30th, 2004 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutThe latest issue of Smithsonian* has a good article about Diane Arbus and the retrospective exhibit of her work that began at the SFMOMA and is currently touring the country. If you’ve already seen the exhibit, it doesn’t offer a lot of new information, but if you haven’t, it’s worth a look.
I’ve always liked Diane Arbus’s photographs. I like them precisely because they’re unsettling to so many people (including me).
Recently I’ve been privy to some thoughtful, pointed criticism of Arbus. But I can’t agree with it. I do not at all find her camera’s gaze to be condescending or superior. In fact, I find it to be relentlessly egalitarian. Triplets, nudists, drag queens, burlesque dancers, boys in the park and society matrons – all are treated equally, coolly, dispassionately.
It’s the dispassionate part that disturbs a lot of people, I think. There’s certainly no warmth to Arbus. But I also appreciate the fact that she makes visible those people that many of us have been taught either not to look at at all, or else to pity. Arbus is unpitying. That’s a virtue, not a flaw, from my perspective.
Which doesn’t mean you have to like her. But I at least find it impossible not to at least respect her. Her camera doesn’t always bring out the best in people. But it brings out the real. And that’s where the artistic power of her photos lie. That crisp, unflinching aesthetic.
Of course, I think the distance, the dispassionate quality of her photos, opens up a certain distance betweeen subject and viewer, and that interpretive gap can be filled with all sorts of stuff – some of it not pleasant at all.
The best part of the article is the reproduction of the contact strip from the shoot that captured the (justly) famous image of the boy in the park with a toy hand grenade, grimacing. Just after that, the same boy is mincing, smiling for the camera, showing off like a boy in front of a camera might naturally do. They’re playful, very different in character from the enlargement – and also, not as powerful. Arbus managed to catch a moment whe playfulness turned into something else, when that boy tapped into something more profound and disturbing than just messing around in the park with toy weapons. It might not be a pleasant insight, but it is valuable. OK, I admit it: I like art that goes beyond the pleasurable. Aesthetic delight is nice, but in this era of design uber alles, it’s also cheap and easy to come by in some ways. Art doesn’t have to be disturbing and unsettling to question the status quo, to rearrange our heads. And I’m not asking it all to be so, nor am I saying that in order for me to appreciate it, it has to be that way. But I welcome that art that does. I delight in the interpretive gap and the uneasy feeling that it produced. I crave it.
* why yes, I do read a lot of magazines.
I’ve always liked Diane Arbus’s photographs. I like them precisely because they’re unsettling to so many people (including me).
Recently I’ve been privy to some thoughtful, pointed criticism of Arbus. But I can’t agree with it. I do not at all find her camera’s gaze to be condescending or superior. In fact, I find it to be relentlessly egalitarian. Triplets, nudists, drag queens, burlesque dancers, boys in the park and society matrons – all are treated equally, coolly, dispassionately.
It’s the dispassionate part that disturbs a lot of people, I think. There’s certainly no warmth to Arbus. But I also appreciate the fact that she makes visible those people that many of us have been taught either not to look at at all, or else to pity. Arbus is unpitying. That’s a virtue, not a flaw, from my perspective.
Which doesn’t mean you have to like her. But I at least find it impossible not to at least respect her. Her camera doesn’t always bring out the best in people. But it brings out the real. And that’s where the artistic power of her photos lie. That crisp, unflinching aesthetic.
Of course, I think the distance, the dispassionate quality of her photos, opens up a certain distance betweeen subject and viewer, and that interpretive gap can be filled with all sorts of stuff – some of it not pleasant at all.
The best part of the article is the reproduction of the contact strip from the shoot that captured the (justly) famous image of the boy in the park with a toy hand grenade, grimacing. Just after that, the same boy is mincing, smiling for the camera, showing off like a boy in front of a camera might naturally do. They’re playful, very different in character from the enlargement – and also, not as powerful. Arbus managed to catch a moment whe playfulness turned into something else, when that boy tapped into something more profound and disturbing than just messing around in the park with toy weapons. It might not be a pleasant insight, but it is valuable. OK, I admit it: I like art that goes beyond the pleasurable. Aesthetic delight is nice, but in this era of design uber alles, it’s also cheap and easy to come by in some ways. Art doesn’t have to be disturbing and unsettling to question the status quo, to rearrange our heads. And I’m not asking it all to be so, nor am I saying that in order for me to appreciate it, it has to be that way. But I welcome that art that does. I delight in the interpretive gap and the uneasy feeling that it produced. I crave it.
* why yes, I do read a lot of magazines.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 12:35 pm (UTC)The word I use about Arbus, FWIW, is not condescending or superior, but "othering" as if she was saying, "I take photos of people who are not like me." As you so eloquently point out, this is neither good nor bad, it's simply her style, and can be a very useful style.
But here's my question: is condescending or superior necessarily in conflict with egalitarian? I might agree that Arbus is equally condescending to all her subjects. Can that be called an egalitarian stance? I'm not sure.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 01:02 pm (UTC)