jtk Posted January 29, 2011 Share Posted January 29, 2011 <p>Diane Arbus as recalled and as recorded/transcribed. </p> <p>http://www.aphotostudent.com/</p> <p>Seems totally humanistic to me. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBarrington Posted January 29, 2011 Share Posted January 29, 2011 <p>Interesting, to be sure. What struck me in that 30 minute film, was the . . . ambivalence she felt towards her subjects and towards herself, and towards her photographs. I get the feeling that she was always trying to find the value in her life, and in ours, and never feeling certain that she found that value, or didn't find it. <br /><br />I don't think she trusted her feelings, or even instinct. To her, I think all of life was like seeing the art of a precocious adolescent. You just can't tell if you are seeing the work of a genius, or self indulgent bullshit.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luis_g Posted January 29, 2011 Share Posted January 29, 2011 <p>I can.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBarrington Posted January 29, 2011 Share Posted January 29, 2011 <p>Luis, you are still walking around and she isn't. That's what not knowing can do to you.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luis_g Posted January 29, 2011 Share Posted January 29, 2011 <p>I was talking about seeing between genius & "self-indulgent bullshit.". Unlike many I have seen scores of prints first-hand, are what matters. The suicide gets too much attention, IMO. Your mileage obviously varies.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blake_schwalbe Posted January 29, 2011 Share Posted January 29, 2011 <p>I'm not following. What is: "Seems totally humanistic to me" refer to? I don't understand what it's referring to. Please explain.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted January 29, 2011 Author Share Posted January 29, 2011 <p>By "totally humanistic" I mean I suspect she felt she was one with the rest of us, which by definition means "not sure." That alone is enough to cause some folks to quit the game. The game (life, photography, whatever) may not have made her "happy," but is happiness anyone's best pursuit, especially if we want to call them "artists?" </p> <p>Humanistic suggests "warts and all." </p> <p>When someone "trusts their feelings and instincts" they tend not to be reflective. Full of easy answers, averse to questions. Sarah Palin is famous for trusting her feelings and instincts.</p> <p>IMO "ambivalence" often suggests that a person is weighing things, trying to comprehend. Bob Dylan: "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Me: I have a lot more questions than I had forty years ago. </p> <p>I try not to reduce the work of a photographer to words (but I often slip). I don't like most of Mapplethorpe's work, despite the beauty of the prints, for a variety of reasons but my first responsibility is to admit my negative attitude before pretending to analyze it. </p> <p>I think it's easy to draw negative conclusions about Diane Arbus's work. That ease alone might be a warning that something is being missed. Many use faux psychology to demean this particular photographer, fearing (perhaps) to deal with her work. It's much easier to analyze than to see, especially when we're uncomfortable. Maybe I shouldn't have said "humanistic." Maybe I should have called her a monster. Would that change the work? </p> <p> </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBarrington Posted January 29, 2011 Share Posted January 29, 2011 <p>John Kelly wrote,"IMO "ambivalence" often suggests that a person is weighing things, trying to comprehend. "<br> That is exactly what I got out of her words in that film. She was continually trying to figure out what was going on and she felt she had to just give up and accept. Just because we accept a situation, that doesn't mean we like it. I don't think she was happy with the situation.</p> <p> </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iliafarniev Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>Apparently, she just plainly and utterly detested all that there was and only tried to entertain herself by putting it up in more or less aesthetic and polite form, probably hoping naively for some kind rational comprehension or useful communication. Take a look at the 'Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park' - typical way of beautyful idealist. Alas, all in vain.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blake_schwalbe Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>Her bouts with depression were debilitating, but it was a clinical depression unrelated to her photography or the normal ups and downs of life. She suffered quite a bit when Arbus left her, but he helped her all the time with his expertise in the darkroom, setting it up and writing down all the formulas for her. She was thirteen when she fell in love with him, and he was eighteen. She came from a highly privileged background, but struggled financially as an adult, and that could get anyone down. She was consciously an ingenue. She said that she looked for the flaw in people that would be revealed by the camera. She had her agenda. She literally seduced her subjects to take what she wanted. More than a few people refused to talk to her after they saw what she did to them with the camera. But her <em>freaks</em>, as everyone calls them, she considered royalty.<br /><br />Her friend Avedon was just like her. The way he photographed his dying father. Or the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, by telling them just before taking the photo that his taxi had run over a dog and killed it. Or what he did to Dorothy Parker. My goodness!<br /><br />Every photographer knows how the camera is able to reveal precisely what people try to hide. I think a humanist maybe is a little less ruthless that way.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBarrington Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>I agree that 'humanist' is not how I would describe her work. Though to be honest, the term has no firm definition that all seem willing to use. There is a sort of ruthless quality to some of her work.<br /><br />I wonder if she truely did consider her subjects (victims? Freaks?) royalty. I know in that short film her words spoke highly of them, but clearly they were there for her to exploit. I mean, I think highly of the ham I had for lunch, but I don't really care about the nobility, or character of the pig that provided that ham.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted January 30, 2011 Author Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>Ilia and Blake seem to have concluded (seem to have abandoned curiosity) that unhappy lives are "all in vain" and that "ruthlessness" is somehow not "humanist."</p> <p>By contrast, Glenn Barrington evidently listened to what<strong> Arbus</strong> said :</p> <p><em>"She was continually trying to figure out what was going on and she felt she had to just give up and accept. Just because we accept a situation, that doesn't mean we like it. I don't think she was happy with the situation." </em></p> <p>Her suicide doesn't even hint at a life lived "in vain." <strong>Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath</strong> come to mind. Maybe the life has been lived fully. Why not respect these people? How many will ever do as much with their lives as as Hemingway, Plath, or Arbus? If one finds raising a happy family is comparable, fine..it defines that person's value system and life goals.</p> <p>Several "art photographer" friends and I were deeply moved by Avedon's mural-sized portraits of his dying father. Few folks respect the dying process, few care enough about their fathers to make such photos, or aren't skilled or brave enough. It's tough. I tried with my mother and I hate my failures. On the other hand, I gave it a shot.</p> <p>I live within an hour of several of <strong>Avedon's </strong>western places. In the course of things I know the kind of people he depicted so well (ruthlessly and honestly), and who abound in <strong>The American West</strong>. Many of Avedon's critics are folks who rarely get far from suburbs, turning their eyes away from reality (perhaps consoling themselves with candids of homeless). Some rely on someone else's "analysis" (as with Arbus), going so far as to speak negatively about the subjects themselves...their inferiors: cursed by accident, poor and unsophisticated.</p> <p>Glenn and I have different takes on some of this, but that's what I like most about people. Again, 7/7.</p> <p>I carelessly used "humanist." It does usually imply warmth and fellow-feeling. My spin on it has to do with shared ruthless realities (mortality, genetics, circumstances, weaknesses).</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellis_vener_photography Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>Maybe she finally succeeded in killing herself becasue she felt drained, that she couldn't go any further, that she had exhausted what she had to say as a photographer.<br> Maybe she finally succeeded in killing herself becausee her depression finally got to be too much to bear.<br> Neither condition has much to do with the actual work she did. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blake_schwalbe Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>I must admit I may be out of my element. I'm not completely following John's comments. I mean, I think we agree but I'm not sure.<br /><br />I know from reading about Avedon's portraits in the American West, that he sort of transported his New York way of working in a studio out into the landscape. He had a white background and exposed many sheets of film in the manner of a fashion shoot, which were then edited very tightly after a laborious I think three year process of proofs and prints from his darkroom technicians. His subjects, when he showed them the prints on the side of a building in an impromptu exhibit, didn't recognize themselves. They didn't see themselves that way. He took from them what he wanted. The camera has a lot of power that way. That's why of course it's important to establish trust. Or you can take what are basically not very flattering portraits for your own reasons.<br /><br />Diane took photographs of her father too as he was dying. She wrote about it in her journals. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blake_schwalbe Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>Is that what part of this thread was about? That her depression was linked with the photographs, sort of a causal relationship? She suffered from severe bouts of depression, of the clinical sort that would require hospitalization. It was a disease that wasn't treated successfully. She couldn't explain it herself. It would overtake her and she would be bedridden for a week.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iliafarniev Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>I would agree with Ellis, we better leave the final circumstances of her life to be her own and see the body of her photographic work as such. After all the pictures were taken long years before she checked out.</p> <p>As for Johns interpretation of my OP, I have to disagree. I was not making point about value of her life and/or humanistic achievment nor making any judgements nor conclusions on these matters. I was saying, her work should/can be seen as a personal investigation in the matters of humanity and its values as such - deep, mysterious, unflattering, often disturbing, always with powerful transforming potential. Sort of ultimate quest she consciously decided to conduct, studying not only her photo subjects but also reactions of other people and most of all her own ones, however dramatic or revealing or ruthless - exploring her personal talent. It is only regreatable that seeing the true nature she could not find strength and had chosen to leave instead of working on improving it.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBarrington Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>Can we really isolate her work, from her depression, from her suicide, from her attititude towards her subjects and her own life? Aren't they all of a piece? How do we isolate those threads of any life from the rest and then comment on ONLY those isolated threads? I think our lives are really sort of a messy goo, not an intricate weave of discrete threads that can be unraveled and examined. They may start out as threads but they go into that sausage grinder of our life and come out at the end all wrapped up in a biographical casing! (sorry for that analogy!)<br /><br />It seems to me that all we can comment on is her history and our overall impression of her life. No matter how saintly or evil, there are going to be aspects of her life and character that we like, and some we think kind of suck.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_reichert1 Posted January 30, 2011 Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>Thank you posting the link, John. Viewing the film was time well spent, and I've passed it along to others.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted January 30, 2011 Author Share Posted January 30, 2011 <p>I think job #1, if we identify as visual people, is to consider Diane Arbus's photos long before considering her purported pathology. fyi my perspective is that of the "new critics" of long ago in literature (first by Leslie Fiedler), who held that it hindered appreciation of the work to view it through the lens of biography.</p> <p>I don't know if Fiedler ever addressed photography, but Susan Sontag (his younger peer) did. I've cited this repeatedly, to the distress of folks who don't read enough to envision any similarity between photography and literature: http://www.coldbacon.com/writing/sontag-againstinterpretation.html</p> <p> </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted March 1, 2011 Author Share Posted March 1, 2011 <p>IMO this is a perfect thread. Minimal windbagging, far better writing skills than usual (no matter what I think about the "ideas"). Interesting to see the changes of perspective, first purporting to be morally superior to the photographer as a person, then merely patronizing.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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