arbus

Yesterday afternoon I attended an Arbus "slide show" at MoMA. This is how the event was billed:

"How might a photographer’s precise use of language illuminate and expand the perception of her pictures and the singular nature of the mind behind them? Join MoMA for a presentation of 'A Slide Show and Talk by Diane Arbus', an original recording of a 1970 slide presentation, in which the artist speaks about photography, using her own work and other photographs, snapshots, and clippings from her collection. The film, a recreation using the original soundtrack, first screened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2005, has been shown publically fewer than a dozen times.

Following the screening, Francine Prose, Michael Cunningham, and Doon Arbus will read from the recently released book, Diane Arbus: A Chronology, a biography of the photographer primarily composed of excerpts from her letters, notebooks, writings, and journals. They will converse about the nature of observation, metaphor, and imagery as it appears in all aspects of her work. Come celebrate the life of Diane Arbus, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists."


I was like a kid in the candy store, a groupie at a rock concert.


I'd never heard Diane Arbus' voice before. I was mesmerized, entertained, moved, thrilled and inspired. She was funny! She had a lilting voice and giggled often. She was at once brilliant and silly, wise and childlike.


Here is a quote from Arbus that I had not heard before and that I love very much. It is from a 1971 letter to Davis Pratt at the Fogg Museum in response to a request for a brief statement about photographs.


"They are proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away, but when you come back they'll still be there looking at you."