Diane Arbus: Untitled [Hardcover]

Diane Arbus (Photographer), Doon Arbus (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2005

Untitled may well be Arbus's most transcendent, most romantic vision. It is a celebration of the singularity and connectedness of people and it demonstrates Arbus' remarkable visual lyricism.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"The photographs were taken at residences for the mentally retarded between 1966 and 1971, places she kept going back to every few months or so, to picnics, dances, on Halloween," writes Arbus's daughter in the short afterword here. "This is simply information. What is in the pictures lies closer to home." In fact, what is revealed on page after page hits almost too close to home. Best known for her documentary yet wholly empathetic photographs of the human oddities from which polite society averts its gaze, Arbus reached the limits of the medium's possibilities for both truth-telling and identification in this series made in the years and months before her suicide. In those times, anyone choosing the severely handicapped as subject matter would risk accusations of exploitation, but this collection is immune: not simply because the subjects are clearly willing participants, giddily posing for the rare opportunity, but also because the product utterly lacks a voyeuristic dimension. There is no visible attempt to compose an art or to layer the images with the artist's interpretation. These are simply some of the most disturbingly honest photographs ever taken. Essential for all photography collections.?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In an afterword to this remarkable gathering of her mother's photographs, Doon Arbus insists that the intent of these works "wasn't . . . about who or what she saw, but about the experience of seeing it and the power of her photographs to make that experience visible." Between 1969 and 1971, Diane Arbus focused her lens on residents in homes for the mentally retarded. Her patient eye searches out the individual in an isolated space and time, for instance, a little girl who squeezes a Styrofoam cup in her hands while holding under her arm a shoe box bearing the brand name "Child Life," providing ironic contrast with her face, which looks, somehow, too old. Doon Arbus writes that her mother's photographs remind "us that facts lie at the root of what we're looking at," yet it takes us a moment to realize or even come to terms with those facts. These haunting images, jarring yet magical, arrive from the past to give a lyrical poke at our collective subconscious, to wake us up--and remind us to look. Raul Nino

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Aperture; 1st edition (June 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 089381623X
• ISBN-13: 978-0893816230
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 14.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #903,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Damaged Lives, Perfected Photos, March 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Diane Arbus: Untitled (Hardcover)

Exhibiting her pictures taken at homes for the mentally handicapped, this book made me feel both sorrow for the situations these people lived in, as well as the innate beauty of someone who doesn't judge and lives their life being joyous. Alternately smiling and furrowing my brow, I have looked through this book numerous times. These people don't pose for their photographs, they simply exist and Diane Arbus has captured their existence with an amazing beauty and personal touch.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a work of startlingly brilliant photographic genius, January 8, 2005

By 

Chris Edwards (East Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diane Arbus: Untitled (Hardcover)

Diane Arbus was to photography what Andrew Wyeth was to painting, or what Carson McCullers was to literature. Arbus's work was startingly beautiful--not in the conventional sense, but in the sense that the bare emotions conveyed by her subjects was simply beautiful in its humanity. Arbus photographed people that other photographers of the time weren't interested in capturing on their lenses--she was best at photographing those who lived on the outside of mainstream society, and her work was not only of immense honesty but also provided something of a character study for every person she photographed. This collection is composed of photographs she shot of mentally handicapped or disturbed individuals, shortly before her death. It is an unflinching, honest look at people who are largely either pitied or mocked by society.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Subjectivity, December 9, 2002

By 

Trudee Britt "avalon1968" (The ATL, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Diane Arbus: Untitled (Hardcover)

A sad book, a mind-opening book, and many more things. Viewing these photographs will conjure up completely different personal reactions, depending upon your frame of mind at the time of viewing. That is what is so remarkable about Arbus' work; so many emotions are brought to the surface.

And while I know that some people will be turned off, even repulsed by this final phase of Arbus' work, I strongly disagree with the reviewer from Chico, CA in saying that it would have been better if this work has not been published. This work is not pretty, and it is not candy-coated, but it should be, and thankfully has been, published. Real life is not always pretty, and we each have our own concepts of such ideals. If you are uncomfortable with other's perspectives on beauty and reality, close the book or sell it to someone else. But do not impose your censorship on me.