Diane Arbus: Family AIbums

Born to a wealthy Jewish-American family, Diane Arbus (1923-1971)

was raised in affluent surroundings in New York City. Unlike her

famous brother, the poet Howard Nemerov, she never attended

college. At age 18 she married the aspiring photographer and actor

Allan Arbus, and during the next twenty years the couple worked as

professional photographers for fashion magazines and advertisers,

including Russek's Fifth Avenue, the chic department store owned

by Arbus s father.

As her marriage began to crumble and her husband more

seriously pursued acting, Arbus continued working for fashion and

commercial clients but also turned to a different kind of photogra-

phy. Between 1955 and 1957, she studied with Lisette Model and

began to develop a penetrating documentary vision, producing

pictures very unlike the work she was doing for advertisers. By

the 1960s, she had gained a reputation as a photographer of New

York's many subcultures. By 1967, her pictures were so admired

among the New York cognoscenti that she was one of the three

photographers invited to participate in the Museum of Modern Art's

New Documenfs show. lt launched her international reputation

and career.

What was Arbus's documentary vision? ln 1968, three years

before her suicide, Arbus wrote that she was compiling her photo-

graphs into a "family album," likening itto a "Noah's ark" and

perhaps imagining in itthe people who might be remembered and

saved in the aftermath of the tumultuous 1960s. "Family," in Arbus's

sense, consisted of people held together by all sorts of bonds. some

traditional and others alternative, and deserving of special attention.

This exhibition re-examines Arbus's never-completed project

and offers a glimpse into what such an album might have looked

like. lt assembles pictures of various kinds of familles and family

members and offers Arbus's critical, sometimes humorous, often

sympathetic viewing of fathers, mothers, children, and partners'

ln addition, it includes the contact sheets for six different portrait

sessions and reveals Arbus's working methods and selection

process as she aimed to find appropriate subjects for her ark' ln all'

Diane Arbus: Family Atbums proposes a new way to understand the

concerns and qoals of this most important American photographer'

Arbus took a wide range of pictures of mothers, a key figure in most

family albums. With good reason: mothers help secure the notion ol

"family," and by their mere presence cohere the many disparate

photographs that make up an album. The women Arbus photo-

graphed in the 1960s include some whose notoriety derived from

their status as mothers: Marguerite 0swald, the mother of Lee

Mothers

Diane Arbus. Blaze Starr at

h0me,1964. Copyright O Estate

of Diane Arbus, 1965. Esquire

Collection, Spencer Museum of

Art, the University of Kansas

Diane Arbus, Madalyn Murray

in her bedroon,1964. Copyright

O Estate of Diane Arbus, 1964.

Esquire Collection, Spencer

Museum of Art, the University oI

Kansas

Harvey 0swald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy,

and Madalyn Murray, the petitioner who successfully challenged

compulsory school prayer on behalf of her son.

ln the case of Murray, Arbus explored the famed atheist's

relationship with her two sons and to the home in which they lived,

photographing Murray on a big sofa, in her kitchen, living room,

bedroom, and outside her front door. These pictures explored

Murray's role as a mother and perhaps even suggested how the

small house became a refuge for her and her family, especially

when they were besieged by the local and national press.

0ther "mother" pictures interrogated the matriarchal de-

meanor, like that of Flora Knapp Dickinson, an Honorary Regent of

the Daughters of the American Revolution, and Mrs. T. Charlton

Henry, the noted socialite and fashion luminary. Still other photo-

graphs-of the stripper Blaze Starr, the sexy film star Mae West,

the wartime personality Tokyo Rose-explored how women, not

normally associated with motherhood, could appear more maternal

in their own domestic settings.

Fathers

Children

Diane Arbus, King and Aueen of a Senior

Citizens'Dance, N. Y C., 1970. Copyright O

Estate of Diane Arbus,1970. Esquire Collectlon,

Spencer Museum of Art, the University 0f

Ka nsas

What constituted fatherhood in the lg60s? Arbus's many pictures

of fathers, patriarchs, and famous men were made when this ques-

tion was being regularly asked. Typical of Arbus's interests and

sensibilities as a photographer, she sought out men whose claims

on fatherhood derived from different forms of authority and public

presence. Representative father figures included Bennett Cerf,

president of the publishing firm Random House; Donald Gatch, a

southern physician whose causes were receiving national attention;

the midget Andrew Batoucheff, who was married five times and per-

formed onstage as, alternately, Marilyn Monroe and Maurice

Chevalier; and the writer Norman Mailer.

The mother of two young girls, Arbus was confronted daily with the

needs. experiences, and desires of children. In addition, she often

photographed children, buttoned in the latest fashlons. for magazine

ads and spent hours dressing and posing them for her camera. As

sitters, they provided Arbus with an especially provocative and

challenging subject, at once filled with their own visions and under-

standings of a world in transition, and yet also serving as recepta-

cles for the longings and dreams of others.

Partnership is key to the bonds that hold families together, but

Arbus's desire to interrogate and chart the changing family led her

to photograph several unusual sets of partners: a married couple

who lived as nudists, a Santa Claus with his "real" wife in his "real"

home, and Lillian and Dorothy Gish, the two deeply attached sisters

who earlier in their lives had been silent film stars.

Perhaps the most difficult, yet key photographs for Arbus's album

were images of families whose bonds were more traditional. Held

together by marriage, blood, and law, these kinds of families fell

under scrutiny and were often dismissed as anachronistic by the

countercultures and alternative collectives of the '1960s. With her

camera, Arbus asked which aspects of these more traditional fami-

lies could survive. What bonds of affection could remain intact?

Diane Arbus,

Robert Evans

and his family,

1968" Copyright

@ Estate of

Diane Arbus,

1965, Esquire

Colle ction,

Spencer

Museum of Art,

the University of

Ka nsas

Partners

Families

ti:lli,ffi:.:)

What forms of community could be gleaned

from them? 0r, conversely, what final ves-

tiges of an earlier family life needed

farewell?

0ne set of previously unknown family

photographs reveals how Arbus worked

through these questions. ln late 1969, Arbus

photographed the Konrad Matthaei family in

their New York townhouse. Matthaei was a

well-known television actor and theater

owner and his family-surrounded by

celebrity and media attention-was just the

sort to which Arbus was often drawn. For

two days, she followed the family around

the townhouse, recording meals. family

arriving for holiday dinner, the children

playing with newtoys. Arbus removed

obstructing objects and positioned herself

and her subjects carefully, taking an aston-

ishing 322 photographs, roughly one every

two minutes. The contact sheets from this

session, as well as others presented in this

exhibltion, provide insight into Arbus's meth-

ods and choices as she worked toward the

idea of 'Jfamily album."

Diane Arbus, Untitled contact sheet, detail, 1969.

Matthaei Family Collection @ Marcella Hague

Matthaei Ziesmann

This brochure is produced bythe Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the Spencer Museum ofArt,

the university of Kansas. Reproduction oI Esquire photographs by Diane Arbus is authorized by the

Spencer Museum ofArtto promote the exhibition in accordance with the License granted bythe Estate

of Diane Arbus.