Week 14: Portrait photography by Diane Arbus

Tuesday, October 21, 2014 Ching Lea Yee 0 Comments

For project 3 I wanted to research more on portrait photographers. One that I came across was Diane Arbus.

Diane Arbus (New York, 1923-1971) revolutionized the art she practiced. Her bold subject matter and photographic approach produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity -- in its steadfast celebration of things as they are.

I feel that for portrait photography there is an agreement to risk trust and acceptance of each other between the photographer and the subject. For Diane Arbus, she was interested in them for what they were most specifically. She did not want representatives of philosophical positions or life styles or physiological types, but unique mysteries. Her subjects surely perceived this, and revealed themselves without reserve, confident that they were not being used as conscripts to serve an exterior issue. They were also doubtless interested in her.

What I like about her portrait photography is that there is a powerfully individual presences that exist in her pictures that transcend the abstractions of role. Her subjects were often seen with disguises, costumes to conceal from the casual viewer a more intimate truth.