Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer

666 Pages·2016·4.73 MB·English

by  Arthur Lubow

DEDICATION
For Jason
EPIGRAPH
A photograph is a secret about a secret.
The more it tells you the less you know.
—DIANE ARBUS
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
Photographs Discussed in the Text
PART ONE: A DAUGHTER, A WIFE, AND A MOTHER
1 The Decisive Moment
2 Stage-Set French
3 Them Against the World
4 Mysterious, but Not Blurry
5 Enter Allan
6 A Friendly-Looking Beard
7 Weddings
8 Living, Breathing Photography
9 Floating Weightless and Brilliant
10 Doon Is Born
11 Mr. and Mrs. Inc.
12 A Mystical Friendship
13 A Long-Awaited Consummation
14 Central Park Prophecy
PART TWO: BREAKING AWAY
15 Out the Prison Door
16 Hermitage Seductions
17 A Spanish Impasse
18 Italian Street Photographer
19 Modish and Empty
20 Circus
21 Out of Fashion
22 Finding Her Spot
23 Raincoat in Central Park
24 A Tiny Woman with a Grand Manner
25 What She Learned
26 Notes of Unhappiness
27 Losing Herself
PART THREE: BECOMING A PHOTOGRAPHER
28 The Ground Was Shifting
29 Buy Amy’s Present, Go to the Morgue
30 A Mephistopheles, a Svengali, a Rasputin
31 A Manual of Facial Types
32 The Weeping Clown and Fearless Tightrope Walker
33 The Bizarre and the Chic at Bazaar
34 Freak Show
35 Punchy New Journalism
36 Silver Spoon
37 Forlorn and Angry Children
38 Self-Created Women
39 Tinseltown
PART FOUR: KNOWING PEOPLE IN AN ALMOST BIBLICAL SENSE
40 A Fantastically Honest Photographer
41 Is the Jewish Couple Happy?
42 And Then You’re a Nudist
43 It’s Not Like You’re Acting
44 To Know People, Almost in a Biblical Sense
45 An Element of Torture
46 People on Plinths
47 Teaching Younger People
48 This Is the Whole Secret
49 Mysteries of Sex
50 I Think We Should Tell You, We’re Men
51 Nancy and Pati in Middle Age
52 Each with a Tiny Difference
PART FIVE: THE CRYSTAL-CLEAR VISION OF A POET
53 Desperate to Be Famous
54 Peace and Love
55 An English Connection
56 The Heart of the Maelstrom
57 Fantasy Made Actual
58 A Family on Their Lawn in Westchester
59 A Frightful Zombie
60 An Ideal Woman
61 A Political Year
62 Flatland
63 Swinging London
Photographic Insert
PART SIX: HAPPY EVEN THOUGH THEY DON’T HAVE ANYTHING
64 Asylum
65 Art and Money
66 Fantastic and Real
67 A Dowsing Rod for Anguish
68 Wild Dynamics
69 An Urban Palace
70 A Modern-Day Ingres
71 The Mexican Dwarf and the Jewish Giant
PART SEVEN: HEARTBREAKING AND DIZZYING
72 Almost Like Ice
73 Storms
74 It’s All Chemical
75 Old Photographs, New Camera
76 Blood
77 Aging
78 Song and Dance
79 “Love”
80 A Woman Passing
81 You Can’t Come In
82 Loose Ends
83 Like Hamlet and Medea
84 Runes
85 Things That Nobody Would See
Sources and Acknowledgments
Notes
Permissions
Index
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
PHOTOGRAPHS DISCUSSED IN THE TEXT
Room with lamp and light fixture, N.Y.C. 1944
Self-portrait pregnant, N.Y.C. 1945
Laughing girl, Italy, circa 1951
A hill in Frascati, Italy, circa 1952
Nuns and their charges, Italy, 1952
Boy above a crowd, N.Y.C. 1956
Boy in the subway, N.Y.C. 1956
Boy reading a magazine, N.Y.C. 1956
Boy stepping off the curb, N.Y.C. circa 1956
Carroll Baker on screen in “Baby Doll” (with silhouette), N.Y.C. 1956
Couple eating, N.Y.C. 1956
Falling leaf with bare branches in background, N.Y.C. 1956
Kiss from “Baby Doll,” N.Y.C. 1956
Lady on a bus, N.Y.C. 1956
Masked boy with friends, Coney Island, N.Y. 1956
People on a bench, Central Park, N.Y.C. 1956
Woman in a bow dress, N.Y.C. 1956
Woman carrying a child in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1956
Woman and a headless dummy, N.Y.C. 1956
Woman on the street with her eyes closed, N.Y.C. 1956
Woman on the street with parcels, N.Y.C. 1956
Woman with two men, N.Y.C. 1956
Kid in black-face with friend, N.Y.C. 1957
Couple in silhouette watching burning cross on screen, N.Y.C. 1958
Female impersonators’ dressing room, N.Y.C. 1958
Female impersonators in mirrors, N.Y.C. 1958
Women on a sun deck, Coney Island, N.Y. 1959
Andrew Ratoucheff in his rooming house, N.Y.C. 1960
Coney Island, N.Y. 1960 [windy group]
Coney Island bath house, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1960
Couple arguing, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960
Flora Knapp Dickinson, Honorary Regent of the Washington Heights Chapter of
the Daughters of the American Revolution, N.Y.C. 1960
Hezekiah Trambles “The Jungle Creep,” N.Y.C. 1960
Mrs. Dagmar Patino at the Grand Opera Ball, N.Y.C. 1960
Person Unknown, City Morgue, N.Y.C. 1960
Snake eating a rat backstage at Hubert’s Museum, N.Y.C. 1960
Walter L. Gregory “The Mad Man from Massachusetts,” N.Y.C. 1960
Wax museum strangler, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960
Woman shouting, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960
His Serene Highness, Prince Robert de Rohan Courtenay, 1961
The House of Horrors, Coney Island, N.Y. 1961
Jack Dracula, the Marked Man, N.Y.C. 1961
Max Maxwell Landar (Uncle Sam), 1961
Miss Cora Pratt, the counterfeit lady, 1961
Stormé DeLarverie, the lady who appears to be a gentleman, N.Y.C. 1961
Two female impersonators backstage, N.Y.C. 1961
William Mack, Sage of the Wilderness, N.Y.C. 1961
A castle in Disneyland, Cal. 1962
Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962
A girl in a hat at Central Park Lake, N.Y.C. 1962
Girl on a stoop with baby, N.Y.C. 1962
A house on a hill, Hollywood, Cal. 1962
James T. Farrell in his hotel room, N.Y.C. 1962