The New York Times Magazine and author Arthur Lubow have provided a great service to the history of 20th century photography. What a wonderful article on one of the world's most influential artists, Diane Arbus. It looks like this is going to be her fall, with an exhibit and new book on the horizon. Hopefully a new generation of 'instant-gratification' digital photographers can be instructed and inspired to spend some time understanding the lives around them before snapping the shutter.
"Today, when you shuffle through the lifeless photos by imitators in the Arbus idiom, you are reminded of how much time Arbus spent with so many of her subjects and of how fascinated she was by their lives. She invested the energy in them that a painter like Lucian Freud or Francis Bacon would devote to repeated portrait sittings; but unlike Freud or Bacon, who chose their intimates as their subjects, Arbus picked strangers and, through her infectious empathy, was able to transform these subjects into intimates."
The beauty of this article is not only its glimpse inside a world hidden for so long (Arbus), but also its tracing the line of great photography from the past to the present. References to August Sander, Lisette Model, Alfred Stieglitz, Berenice Abbott and Alexey Brodovitch have been too long absent from photographic discourse. Every young photographer should take a trip to the library or a second-hand bookstore, find a monograph and study these artists, especially Diane Arbus.
Comments