Diane Arbus Retrospective

VenusZine Photo Editor Nicole Radja shares her thoughts on the Diane Arbus retrospective Revelations making its way around the world.

By Nicole Rudja
Published: March 5th, 2004 | 1:23pm

I don't think many quite understand how difficult it is to be a portrait photographer, particularly one like Diane Arbus. To consistently challenge your fears, face your subject straight on and live the life you were not brought up to, requires courage, compassion and guts.

The show opens with the bangers, but the second room, that is where our story begins. Self-portrait pregnant, NYC 1945, is a semi-nude self-portrait of the artist. She is about 5 months pregnant and the photograph is made as a mirrored self by a 5x7 Deardorff. You see, one must photograph thine self before begging others to sit. This is the beginning.

From there, we delve into her young couples, loners, lovers, superstars, feminists, and street drama. Through her sharpness and darkness none are judged, they are revealed. Trained by Bernice Abbot and Lisette Model, greats from the generation before her, Arbus clearly makes a road for herself. One imagines her approaching her subjects, camera in hand, mind sharp. How did she ever meet a man and his dominatrix, and what did she say to convince them to let her photograph their meetings? How and why did she go to nudist camps, fat camps and homes for the retarded? The woman had books filled with ideas of the types and lives she wanted to enter with her camera, her weapon and shield. She wanted to experience so many types of lives, to be invited
in and to encase their souls onto silver.

I could tell you what's in the show, about her life, what I thought, but I'm going to allow you to do your own research on that one. Read Patricia Bosworth's book on Diane (if anything, to learn to say her name correctly), see the video that accompanies the show, and visit a few times so you can read through her letters, gape at her camera and stare at the corners of her photographs. Take out the left and right of a person and look, really look. Her retrospective is currently traveling the world, and is a recommended road trip, if it's not in, but near to your town.

See Revelations, The Diane Arbus Retrospective

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: October 25, 2003 - February 2, 2004.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art: February 29 - May 30, 2004
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: June 27 - August 29, 2004
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Februay - May 2005
Museum Folkwang, Essen: Germany June -September 2005
Victoria and Albert Museum: London October 2005 -January 2006
Walker Art Center: Minneapolis July 9 - October 8, 2006