Masters of photography – Diane Arbus (documentary, 1972)

I really heard 2 parts to Diane's early artist experience that clearly annotated my own… Diane avoiding the obvious and easily "terrific" (or an easy talented route). Diane said: 'I wasn't a child with tremendous yearnings I didn't worship heroes I didn't long to play the piano or anything. I did paint but I hated painting and I quit right after high school because I was continually told how terrific I was. It was like self-expression time and I was in a private school and a tendency was to say what would you like to do and then you did something and they said "how terrific" it made me feel shaky. I remember I hated the smell of the paint and the noise it would make when I put my brush to the paper sometimes I would not really look but just listened to this horrible sort of squish squish-squish I didn't want to be told I was terrific! I had a sense that if I was so terrific at it it wasn't worth doing. I like to put things up around my bed all the time pictures of mine that I like and other things and I change it every month or so there's some funny subliminal thing that happens. It isn't just looking at it it's looking at it when you're not looking at it it really begins to act on you in a funny way. I suppose a lot of these observations are bound to be after the fact I mean they're nothing you can do to yourself to get yourself to work. You can't make yourself work by putting up something beautiful on the wall or by knowing yourself. Very often knowing yourself isn't really gonna lead you anywhere sometimes it's gonna leave you kind of blank like Here I am there's a me I've got a history, I've got things that are mysterious to me in the world and I've got things that bug me in the world but there are moments when all that doesn't seem to avail'

Doon, run away, and save yourself from the burdens of your mothers fame.

great video

…the Rich Exploiting the Rich…

Thank you for sharing

A wonderful photographer

We need Diane, and dianes, in photography today to say what she said back then. We WAY need that statement these days, with how judgmental and hurtful everyone is of everyone

Most overrated photographer ever.

Love so much her eye, her courage. She has inspired my own work. God Bless her mastery.

Thank you for uploading this. <3 really appreciated.

For myself there's so many photographs she's known for that reek of exploitation. Where is the art, or creativity for that matter, in taking a photograph of a group of Down Mongoloid kids? She intentionally went to the edges of society to photograph subjects that were already loaded with an outsized curiosity. I never understood why people thought that was ground breaking about her work.

don't get it … just dosent speak to me, in the way for instance …cindy sherman does, and makes me just go WOW!…….. and… i guess, and i know this is gonna sound kinda repulsive. but i even find the photos of Rodney akala captures and speaks of a fragile vulnerability, which, ok alas proved all to heartbreaking in the light of what we now know. And hey, i know, although this does not actually speak well of my conscious, but I kinda guess the point is it DID speak to my emotions, enough for me to be moved in ways im not even sure about. Diane Arbus singularly lacks this for me. She lacks any semblance of existential empathy in essence of suject or circumstance. To the point of reducing her artform to capturing an orangutan through the parallel cages of a brooklin monkey house.

She has influenced so many artists and photographers -even films- the twin shots look like Kubrick's shots of twins in The Shining. It is really too bad that no one acknowledges just how much she influenced art, photography, and film. Please thumbs up this video.

To take off the facade of reality-what we want people to see- and look at the dirty, dark and suffering is hard work. I think she wanted to take that facade from her real world as well. To go against what was expected for a middle class suburban woman from that time–to struggle against the norm and face the real struggle–ugly as it can be.

I love her photography but I do think it is cruel and harsh. She does not acknowledge her depression and class and how it affected her harsh look at people on the fringe or any of her subjects for that matter. It is dark and coming from a place within her. Not really as objective as she thinks. Her daughter Amy has her talent and is a lot less harsh. Her photography is more beautiful and more forgiving to her fringe subjects. I suggest you take a look at it. She has a picture of Madonna at the beginning of her career–in tattered thrift clothes and it is a truly beautiful picture of the hopefulness of an artist at the beginning of her career—before all the glitz and glamour takes over. Real and beautiful. Not as harsh as her mother. Amy photographed for the Village Voice for many years and is a truly great talent like her mother. Maybe her pictures are more forgiving because she does not suffer from the same inner demons that led to her mother's demise. All photography and art is affected by your perspective it is never objective.

Interestingly, I think her family's money protected Arbus from many of the addictions and "tragedies" those of us who have never had that type of money and security.  (Not to take away Arbus's deep suffering from depression in any way.)  Hence, perhaps Arbus's belief that she could never be like the people in 1966 Washington Square Park.  Me, with my family's history of financial insecurity and addiction issues and mental health issues, I feel like I can relate to some of those people's issues, or at least I can understand how a childhood with little security often leads to an adulthood of addiction and homelessness.