Diane Arbus

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DIANE ARBUS By Michelle Kwan Matt Miles Amy Horner Karkiu Tang

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Transcript of Diane Arbus

Page 1: Diane Arbus

DIANE ARBUS

By Michelle Kwan Matt Miles Amy HornerKarkiu Tang

Page 2: Diane Arbus

Personal Life

Born in New York

Married to Allan Arbus

Two daughters (Doon & Amy

Arbus)

Divorced afterwards

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Career Life

Fashion Photography Business

Studied Fine Art Photography

Studied Photography with

Berenice Abbot & Lisette Model

In 1960s, taught Photography

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Death

Committed suicide in 1971

Age 48

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“She came to me and said, ‘I can’t photograph,’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And she said, ‘Because what I want to photograph, I can’t photograph.’ ” She told Diane to go home and figure out what it was she really wanted to take pictures of. “And the next session she came to me and she said, ‘I want to photograph what is evil.’ And that was it.” – Lisette Model, Viennese-born photographer

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Fascinated by risk taking Embraced the New York City art world’s life-

on-the-edge attitudes about money, social status and sexual freedom

Pursued same thrill in photography “I always thought of photography as a naughty

thing to do—that was one of my favourite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse”

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In the 1950s and early ’60s, she was using a 35-millimeter camera and natural lighting

Showed the influence of street photography Favoured blurred surfaces and grainy textures Didn’t conform to the tidy look of mainstream

commercial photographs Around 1962 she switched to a 2 1/4 format

camera Created sharper images with brilliant detail She wanted “to see the difference between flesh

and material, the densities of different kinds of things: air and water and shiny.”

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Describe the focus of Arbus’ work in 3 words:

Taboo

Unconventional

Beauty

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“I hear myself saying, ‘How terrific.’ ... I don’t mean I wish I looked like that. I don’t mean I wish my children looked like that. I don’t mean in my private life I want to kiss you. But I mean that’s amazingly, undeniably something.”

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Critics of Diane Arbus• Arbus receives massive praise for

her work after her death.

• However some critics found her work to be disturbing, even repellent.

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Negative Attention Argues that Arbus’s

work is based on ‘distance, on privilege’

The intentions were more cruel then tender.

Angered at the lack of political engagement.

Believed that the subjects had no value.

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Positive Attention

Sandra Phillips believed that

“She was a great humanist photographer who was at the forefront of a new kind of photographic art.”

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Changing Ideologies

Images that represented sexually ambiguous figures and motherhood.

Challenged dominant social and ideological conventions of the late 1950’s and 60’s

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Final Thoughts – What’s your Opinion?

If photography is telling a story of a person/ object.

There isn’t one picture of Arbus’s that doesn’t evoke an emotion from its audience.

She was a trailblazer. She did that she could

do, to exploit conflicts in society artistically.

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

From:“Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph”

(1972)By Doon Arbus, Diane Arbus

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

1. Go places you have never been

“Like a blind date”

“Have absolutely no control on the

scene”

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

2. The camera is a license to enter the

lives of others

“Camera is the license”

“Show interest to your subject, pay respect”

Explain you are a photographer

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

3. Realize you can never truly understand

the world from your subjects eyes

“ the gap between intention and effect”

“ Something is ironic in the world and it has to

do with the fact that what you intend never

comes out like you intended it”

Different perspectives

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

4. Create specific photographs

Be selective

Highlight of the scene

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

5. Adore your subjects

Be compassionate to the subjects

Respect subjects

The power of distortion the lens can

have

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

6. Gain inspiration from reading

Creativity and insights often come from

outside sources

Diversify sources

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

7. Utilize textures to add meaning to

your photographs

“Grains: a kind of tapestry of all these

little dots and everything would be

translated into this medium of dots”

Experiment freely

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

8. Take bad photos

“Funny mistakes”

“You haven’t tried before”

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

9. Sometimes your best photos

aren’t immediately apparent (to you)

“ I’ve gotten to like it better and better

and now I’m secretly sort of nutty about

it.”

First impression isn’t everything

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

10. Don’t arrange others, arrange

yourself

“I work from awkwardness. By that I

mean I don’t like to arrange things if I

stand in front of something, instead of

arranging it, I arrange myself”

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

11. Get over the fear of

photographing by getting to know

your subjects

“I had to ask to photograph them.”

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Lessons from Diane Arbus

12. Your subjects are more

important than the pictures

Connections with your subjects

Your experience

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Discussion

Would you describe her style as documentary or portraiture?

Do you think she misrepresents people?

Does the way she represents people contradicts her aims?