Diane Arbus famously wrote: ‘A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.’ The same might be said about the current ‘Revelations’ exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show gives rise to as many questions as answers regarding the short life (Arbus committed suicide in 1971 at age 48) of this groundbreaking artist who is best known for boldly documenting people on the fringes of society. ”Her equal opportunity lens focused on everything from debutantes to transvestites, side show performers to celebrities, with nudist camp enthusiasts and residents of homes for the mentally disabled also given major play in her work. Arbus’ pictures have the uncanny ability to make ‘normal’ people and scenes seem bizarre and to imbue the unusual with a sense of naturalness and beauty. ”Along with over 200 of her photographs, the diaries, notebooks, cameras and other personal effects of Diane Arbus also are on view in the exhibition. These three so-called libraries provide biographical depth beyond what’s ever been seen before, yet the artist’s presence is most deeply felt in her work, especially the compelling portraiture she created beginning in 1962. ”That was the year Arbus began working with a square format ( 2 1/4-inch twin-lens reflex) camera, leaving behind her 35 mm camera, the favored instrument of most documentary photographers of her era. The artist was seeking greater clarity in her images’she’d had a period of producing grainy ‘grab and shoot’ street photography’as well as fulfilling a desire to have a more direct relationship with the people she was photographing. ” The new camera, held at the waist, required Arbus to carefully frame her subject by looking down into the view finder. The method necessitated the cooperation of her subjects, many of whom became friends. Unlike rectangular images, which lend themselves to narrative interpretations, these new square portraits took on a formal, even classical quality. ”’They’re highly iconic and emblematic,’ says Robert Sobieszek, curator of photography at LACMA. ‘She photographed real people at a specific time and place, but made them into types. The guy in hair curlers becomes every cross dresser, the Jewish giant represents all giants.”’ ”These potent, unflinching portraits’particularly of ‘freaks’ and others outside society’s mainstream’are reflections, too, of Arbus’ own psychological frailty. ” ”’Diane Arbus Revelations’ continues at LACMA through May 31. Tickets are required. Contact: (323) 857-6000.
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