[Leica] Arbus revisited

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

Why would Plath; I mean Arbus differ from any other photographer trying to
find an original cutting edge set of images to wow the critics and the art
directors?
Not to unnecessarily simplify her but why do the opposite either?
Suicide certainly adds flavor to any dead artists work but how complex and
tortured a soul does the person have to be? Many shrinks now are saying its
all about anger not pain. Course none of them asked someone hanging by the
neck from the chandelier their opinion about it.

Dianne Arbus worked long and hard at creating an arresting body of work and
she was successful at it. She had a gift but more to the point she did the
work. She shot the film. Ran it. X'd the contacts. Made the prints from
those X's. Hung them up. Went home. Watched TV. Then went out and shot some
more.
Didn't take no for an answer.


Mark William Rabiner



> From: Robert Meier <robertmeier at usjet.net>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 23:30:07 -0500 (CDT)
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Arbus revisited
> 
>  From a review of Bosworth's biography by Elsa Dorfman:
> 
> 
> The book abounds in what I suspect is improvisation, hearsay and
> undocumented speculation. The standards of language and accuracy (let
> alone interpretation) are very low.
> 
> Bosworth keeps on reminding us that Arbus was only interested in the
> aberration, off-beat sexual practices, tortured sexual identities,
> and physical and mental deformities of her subjects. She suggests
> that Arbus was purposely exploitative and sensationalistic.
> Ironically, this is precisely Bosworth's own approach to her subject.
> She is obsessed with real and imagined aberration, speculates about
> what she considers offbeat sexual practices, imagines tortured sexual
> conflicts...Diane Arbus eludes Bosworth completely.
> 
> The interesting questions are left unasked, let alone, unanswered:
> How did this woman, brought up in the most constricting, conventional
> environment, come to have such a unique personal vision in which
> style and subject-matter were perfectly matched? How did she produce
> so much valuable work in just eleven years? Why was she so insecure
> and uncomfortable with her talent? Was her insecurity and lack of
> self-esteem (as reported, I suspect accurately, by Studs Terkel)
> related to her narrow, ungenerous vision? Was she afraid of her own
> success? And finally, why did she, like Sylvia Plath before her in
> 1963, end her life?