Jump to content

Diane Arbus & Classic Cameras


Recommended Posts

I just spent the day looking through the Diane Arbus exhibit at the

Met, and I think that the inclusion of all her notes and some of her

equipment is one of the best things I have seen in a posthumous

retrospective. I saw a show of Lartigue's work in Paris - work which

was all about what camera he had at what point in his life - and there

wasn't a single camera to be found. Quite an ommission I think,

especially for a photographer. Granted formalist art critics (which

Peter Schejldahl of the New Yorker seems to be) feel that one should

only look at the work and not at the artist or the process, I think

that if you are trying to improve as photographer, seeing how an image

got made is key. Equipment is part of that.

 

For example:

 

Arbus seems to have first worked with a meterless Nikon F, but looking

at the contact sheets provided, she shot nearly entire rolls with

every shot in portrait orientation. Landscape is pretty well the

default orientation, so I can only guess from the number of portrait

orientation shots and prints that Arbus "saw" something

compositionally that led her to make that choice - something I am

guessing that had something to do with shooting people (who tend to be

vertical unless sleeping), but might (might) have also had to do with

isolating the subject to control the image's psychological impact.

 

She next worked with a Rolleiflex, which she writes took her a year to

switch to after using the Nikon. What's most interesting to me though

is that she used a Rollei Wide, not the standard Rollei. That may be

why many of her photos have strangely proportioned people - I mean was

the head on that photo, Boy with Toy Hand Grenade, really that big or

was it the wide angle lens working its magic? Looks like the latter.

It also explains perhaps how/why she got so close to some of her

subjects, shots that look much too close (to me) for a standard Rollei

lens.

 

Later still she starts using a Mamiya C33 with a 55mm, 80mm and 135mm

lens. Again, this helps (me) make sense of some of her shots, given

what the subjects look like in their surroundings, where she must have

been standing in relation to them, how much depth of field is in the

photograph and the changes in some of the portraiture (which begins to

feel less intimate, less sweaty, perhaps merely because she did not

have to stand so close, given the 135mm lens instead of the Rollei

Wide's lens.)

 

And finally she borrows a new Pentax 6x7, which she admits in writing

to "lust after." We all know that language here. Further, she says

that she feels using the 6x7 with its eye-level finder and large

negative size will be the best of both worlds - a medium format Nikon

- allowing her to "make pictures more narrative and temporal, less

fixed and single and complete and isolated." What a great

advertizement for a 6x7! This statement leads me to guess that perhaps

the whole square thing (almost an Arbus trademark) was incidental to

image quality - using a TLR in order to use medium format film and get

a larger negative, the square only being a secondary result as an

aesthetic tool (perhaps a duh-moment for me, but sometimes I am slow.)

 

In a sense, it sounds to me from reading her notes that she was aware

her photographs might have been over-taken by a Diane Arbus "Look"

rather than progressing in a way that might challenge the facility she

had developed in creating that look over the course of her career.

 

Who knows? She killed herself. I have never accepted the cult thing

myself. All I know is that I like her photography and see it as a

continuation of the sort of work that August Sander did with his

People of the Twentieth Century.

 

Sure she posed and collaborated with her subjects, but so did Sander.

Sure she took a lot of photographs of freaks, but looking through the

photographs in this show, the people who are typically freaks in our

society are no more (and perhaps are less) freakish that the Waspy

socialites and hat ladies she shot in between.

 

Just like Sander, I think Arbus' photographs show a sense that the

absurdities of society create a nut house the same size as the world,

and that some people got lost while others live on, and none of this

makes a whole lot of sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very well said Jorn. I'm a fan of Arbus' work and have read all the baloney about her photos being "easy" to take due to the subject matter. Your last sentence sums up her work (and the way many people look at the world) perfectly. Bravo.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not comparing myself to Diane Arbus but I also take probably 90% of my photos in portrait orientation. I've always found 35mm cameras a nuisance in that they all are landscape oriented. One of the cameras I particularly like is my Kiev 645 since it is vertical format. Its also real nice to get 16 shots on a roll instead of 12.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I saw the Arbus exibit which is still at the Scottdale (Arizona) Art museum. I think many of her photos are great, but the boy with the toy grenade is my favorite, Its hard to tell if he is suffering from excitement,frustration ,or just nuts. It's a very good exibit.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Gene. I am actually working on this essay writing thing, trying to make something of myself. A table lamp. I think I would make a nice table lamp.

 

Yeah, Arbus certainly wasn't a wimp when it came to carrying cameras around. There is a photo of her working in Washington Square Park with the Mamiya around her neck with a strobe bolted on, plus a gi-normous (bigger that giant and enormous) camera bag. What's more - she is standing on tiptoe to get the composition she wants. She was not a large person.

 

So get thee to thy Pentax 6x7 and streetwards goeth thou without complaint!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks to a heads-up from Michael Ging I was able to visit the show in Scottsdale this week featuring many photos by Arbus. There were works by many of the giants of XX-Century photography including Robert Frank, August Sander and Wegee. I thought Frank's pictures were the most conventionally beautiful in terms of contast and tonalities, but Arbus's images were the most substantial and arresting in the show by far.<br>    It was never necessary to read the captions to recognize the Arbus style even though the pictures are cropped tightly around the subjects and the lighting is often rather flat. Each of the images seems to penetrate to the core elements of the subject's personality and life experience. It is also remarkable, as I think was alluded to in the accompanying text, that Arbus was able to meaningfully examine the essential characteristics of our society through portrayals of society's outliers.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah exactly - alienation as the universal human emotion.

 

That Scottsdale museum is one of the best small museums in the country. They have that great James Turrell skyspace that is in a little courtyard just off the main entrance. Strange enough, one of the other really good small museums is over at ASU - the ASU Art Museum in its great Antoine Predock building that puts the museum mainly underground.

 

I lived in Phoenix 3 years ago and just was there for a conference last weekend. Nice flowers in the desert, eh? Man oh man I love that desert.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 years later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...