14/09/2022
It’s a palette cleanser from Instagram. The new Diane Arbus show at the Musée des beaux arts de Montreal reminds us of photography as an art form as it was: a medium to capture a moment, a personality, a feeling, and to document something extraordinary or out of the ordinary.
It was gritty and real, not glossy and airbrushed.
Arbus is known for her images of clowns, circus performers, transvestites, couples, nudists and celebrities in and around New York. The show spans the years 1956-1971, when she died by su***de.
A few works that struck me: many spooky clowns in a car (1960); a young couple dancing at a ballroom championship (1962-63); four people at a gallery opening (1968); Mia Farrow (1964) and of course the identical twins of 1966, which grace the cover of the book, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph.
Photography was not allowed at the gallery, so here are a few images supplied by the museum as well as the book cover.
The show goes Sept. 15-Jan. 29.
1. Woman with veil on Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C., 1968, gelatin silver print; printed by Neil Selkirk, sheet: 50.5 x 40.5 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, anonymous gift, 2016. Copyright © Estate of Diane Arbus
2. Puerto Rican woman with a beauty mark, N.Y.C., 1965, gelatin silver print; printed by Neil Selkirk, sheet: 50.8 x 40.6 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, gift of Phil Lind, 2016. Copyright © Estate of Diane Arbus
3. Twins on cover of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph Book (1972)
4. Photographer Diane Arbus poses for a rare portrait in the Automat at Sixth Avenue between 41st and 42nd Street in New York, about 1968. Photo by Roz Kelly/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
5. Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C., 1963. Gelatin silver print; printed later. Sheet: 50.8 × 40.6 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Robin and David Young, 2016. Copyright © Estate of Diane Arbus