While reading through my notes of this course and the Moma Exhibition of Mirrors and Windows I wanted to research further into the photographers that were included in the exhibitition.
“In metaphorical terms, the photograph is seen either as a mirror–a romantic expression of the photo- grapher’s sensibility as it projects itself on the things and sights of this world; or as a window–through which the exterior world is explored in all its presence and reality.”
Taken from the official press release for Windows and Mirrors Moma.
The exhibition suggests that photography is more personal dependent on a view of the artist as opposed to trying to educated on aesthetic or social progress.
With Diane Arbus I was trying to decide if she was a mirror or a window. I have seen many of Arbus’s images of ‘freaks’ She would initially be seen as a window showing us many things in the world that perhaps we do not want to see people that we are curious about and yet it seems wrong to look. Dianes images challenge us to look however is she also telling us something about herself. Does she also feel like she is one of them. However while looking though many of her images I saw some beautiful portraits of people that seem ‘normal’ and I was trying to put my finger on what made these images so attractive that I could stare at them for hours. I remember the first picture I saw of Diane Arbus’s work when I was a child and it stuck in my mind for many years. At the time I had no interest in Art particularly and no knowledge of it while reading an article
the writer comments on how Arbus challenges us to look at her pictures and I realised it is the look of all her subjects the wide open eyes like a child perhaps angry trying to catch our attention. They are staring at us as we are staring at them however there is no shame in her images, no shame in staring just a face looking back.
Arbus seems to have a lot of respect for her subjects. There is no mockery in her images. In fact in this article it is explained how Arbus should spend weeks with a subject getting to know them
“What I’m trying to describe is that it’s impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else’s… That somebody else’s tragedy is not the same as your own.” She admired the people most considered to be “freaks” saying, “Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. [These people] were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.”
In contrast to Arbus’s words Susan Sontag in her book ‘On photography’ states that there is arrogance, distance, privilege, that she does not evoke any sympathy for the people she photographs.
Sontag goes on to say that “the insistent sameness of Arbus’s work, however far she ranges from her prototypical subjects, shows that her sensibility, armed with a camera, could insinuate anguish, kinkiness, mental illness with any subject.
I feel however the fact that Arbus’s got to know her subjects means her images are not voyeuristic and yet there is some disquiet in how they stare at the camera. I would ask if she instructed them how to pose and how to look?
How would we therefore categorise Arbus not as documentary if it is to arouse sympathy for a cause or could it be if merely informative. Perhaps Arbus’s images were a curiosity for all that were different however her later images of people in masks there is a sense of mocking here is she mocking all those who think they are normal did she feel she was always mocked?
Context and Narrative 