Diane Arbus: Case Study and Artist Profile
Diane Arbus
Woman carrying a child in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1956
A CASE STUDY
In this image photographer by Diane Arbus, we see a woman captured in deep focus on a pedestrian walkway in Central Park, carrying a seemingly asleep child in her arms. Laying flat, we see the child pointed up towards the face of his mother, guardian, aunt, or sister. The expression on her face conveys a fervent tiredness, and her frizzy hair leads us to believe that the previous few hours of the day have not been easy. The child’s attire is indicative of those times when it was commonplace for most people to dress formally for most activities—whether it be playing in the park or buying groceries, to dinner parties and bars. Centrally framed, the two subjects seem to have their individual lives put in the spotlight,
NOTES ON ARBUS’ WORK
Most of her photographs are of subjects that may be deemed “outcasts” and “misfits” in society during the time she practiced her photography.
There is a stark difference between the candid and the posed photographs in her collection—the candid ones seem to place equal importance on both the subject and their environments (with the exception of the above feature image) while the posed ones exclusively feature the subjects without much emphasis on the background. For Arbus, the foreground is where the story takes place.
Every photograph feels like a still from a documentary—Arbus, in a way, narrativized the lives of the people that are often cast aside.
She seems fascinated with the individuality of people present in a society that fostered homogeneity.
Can her work be seen as controversial? Is the singling out of people she deems as ‘freaks’ and ‘outcasts’ problematic? Are her photographs exploitative? Or is her work grounded in more than just subjectifying the human body? Is the controversy surrounding her work only apparent due to modern notions of progressivism, and was her work seen as progressive in her day?
Is her tendency to shine a spotlight on “the unusual” reflection on her own life experience and self-perception? To what extent is our art an extension of our self-image?
A clash between voyeurism and self-reflection.
CONVERSATIONS SURROUNDING ARBUS’ WORK
O’Hagan particularizes Arbus’ work as a lesosn in the philosophy of spectatorship. He states that her work “asks questions of the viewer about the limits of looking, about the vicariousness and predatory nature of photography, and about our complicity in all of this” (O’Hagan 2). He argues that the seemingly exploitative nature of Arbus’ practice of photographing what she believes to be the outcasts and misfits of society gives rise to rebates over her intentions. Some argue that her voyeurism is indicative of a position “based on…privilege, on a feeling that what the viewer is asked to look at is really other”, as Susan Sontag suggests. Another school of thought holds that Arbus’ work is not intended to be fascinated by, but to be used as a way of relating to others and creating an alternative understanding of society. O’Hagan cites Nan Goldin as contending that with Arbus. “the life and the art are inextricably intertwined” (O’Hagan 2). In this way, we can entertain the argument that Arbus is captivated by the individuality of people in a society that fostered homogeneity. O’Hagan argues that the very exploitative nature of her work that is so heavily criticized is what Arbus uses to her advantage in order to hold the attention of the spectators, conflicting with their “better instinct…to look away” (O’Hagan 2).
Judith Butler approaches Arbus and her photography from a perspective of struggles in identification of bodies and status symbols. She focuses on the struggle in perceiving Arbus’ work regarding the gaze—to look away or to gaze. The subjects in her photographs are either captured candidly or not, there is no in between; and within this blurriness, there is a constant back and forth between the human instinct to turn away from the “unusual” and the conflicting human instinct to give in to this strangeness. This is in line with Butler’s contention that Arbus’ photographs give rise to a form of reflexivity in spectatorship, wherein the spectator “witness(es) the visual trace of her solicitation in the smiling or tortured figure who is photographed” (Butler 2). Whether the subjection of the people in her photographs is reflective of her own mental health or not, Arbus focus on the conflicting intentions of her spectators by exposing them to the refusal by bodies toward the camera. Voyeurism here takes on a different meaning—rather than being an unfettered capturing of bodies, here it is intentionally representing the human’s natural opposition to being a voyeur. The fact that her candid and posed photographs feature a background versus foreground battle exemplify her intention to both “deflects the gaze and incites a baffled fascination” (Butler 4).
Works Cited
O’Hagan, Sean. “Diane Arbus: Humanist or Voyeur?” The Guardian, 26 July 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jul/26/diane-arbus-photography-sideshow.
Butler, Judith. “Surface Tension: Judith Butler on Diane Arbus.” ArtForum, 2004.
