Diane Arbus Revelations

Rating:
Summary: An Apt Title!
Review: The first book I ever saw that made me realize photographs were more than family snapshots was Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph. For years I've wondered about the woman who took those photographs and how she worked...from getting her subjects to pose for her, to how she developed and processed her film, and also about her life. Revelations provides many answers and more. Kudos to DA's daughter Doon for releasing this material in a beautiful volume that has already provided hours of enlightenment, and it just arrived today. The printing is immaculate and the text is amazing with lots of passages from DA's journals, notebooks, school papers, letters and postcards. This book may well become the definitive work on her, as it provides much more insight to her life and work then the unauthorized biography from the 1980's by Bosworth. This is a perfect book, in my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: Arbus according to Arbus
Review: This is the catalog for a show that opened this week at SFMOMA. It is also a document of considerable authority and very little of the cult shrine that is part of the show. There is no doubt that this is a thorough assessment of Arbus' place in the history of her medium. The first chapter of of the written material is scholarly and completely devoid of the overstatement usually plastered on Diane Arbus. Instead, the author relates her work to that of her various teachers and influences, Lisette Model, Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, August Sander, and many others. There are numerous references to and from her notebooks as well as the notes of others but the writing is neither superfluous nor voyeuristic. It is art history at its best.

The selection of her photographs is comprehensive and well organized as you would expect from her estate which owns them all. No doubt the Fraenkel Gallery near SFMOMA had a lot to do with the quality of the show and book. Read it before you attend the show and you will learn a lot even if you've never heard of her.

Coupled with the detailed chronology of her life, the images give a clear picture of a character which has been obscured by mythology and rumor for 30 years. I am not a fan of Diane Arbus (and certainly not a detractor) but I gained a lot of respect for her as an artist as I read her notes and quotes about her own work.
If you are looking for a biography of a brave young woman artist in the mid-twentieth century, this one is good. It is thorough and not editorialized with adjulation. The only gratuitious facts that I would have left out are the cold details of her death in the coroner's reports at the end of the book. Yet I get the impression this is the way she would have wanted it. This is the book she would have written. Absent some equal scholarship to the contrary, this is the truth about Diane Arbus.

Rating:
Summary: Arbus according to Arbus
Review: This is the catalog for a show that opened this week at SFMOMA. It is also a document of considerable authority and very little of the cult shrine that is part of the show. There is no doubt that this is a thorough assessment of Arbus' place in the history of her medium. The first chapter of of the written material is scholarly and completely devoid of the overstatement usually plastered on Diane Arbus. Instead, the author relates her work to that of her various teachers and influences, Lisette Model, Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, August Sander, and many others. There are numerous references to and from her notebooks as well as the notes of others but the writing is neither superfluous nor voyeuristic. It is art history at its best.

The selection of her photographs is comprehensive and well organized as you would expect from her estate which owns them all. No doubt the Fraenkel Gallery near SFMOMA had a lot to do with the quality of the show and book. Read it before you attend the show and you will learn a lot even if you've never heard of her.

Coupled with the detailed chronology of her life, the images give a clear picture of a character which has been obscured by mythology and rumor for 30 years. I am not a fan of Diane Arbus (and certainly not a detractor) but I gained a lot of respect for her as an artist as I read her notes and quotes about her own work.
If you are looking for a biography of a brave young woman artist in the mid-twentieth century, this one is good. It is thorough and not editorialized with adjulation. The only gratuitious facts that I would have left out are the cold details of her death in the coroner's reports at the end of the book. Yet I get the impression this is the way she would have wanted it. This is the book she would have written. Absent some equal scholarship to the contrary, this is the truth about Diane Arbus.