Diane Arbus: the missing link
Now that digital photography is ubiquitous, everyone can, and does, shoot photos. Without difficulty, we conveniently take shots of our friends, who are more than willing subjects to pose for the moment. Our insane family members, who will only open up to us because they have to, easily give up their privacy while we have them at their weakest hour. But not everyone can get the best out of an unfamiliar, and potentially unwilling, subject. Asking complete strangers to stop for a quick snap is hardly going to happen, especially if you’re asking a team of leather-clad Hell’s Angels to pose for you.
Diane Arbus, the American photographer, resolved to capture these difficult and brazen shots, and she didn’t have the advantage of a tiny, unobtrusive digital camera in her pocket. She was able to get what she wanted through sheer will and canny persuasion. I imagine Arbus to have been the kind of friend who would have been willing to go up to anyone to start a conversation. She’d have been very useful to us boys at about the age of 16.
At the Nottingham Contemporary, a sizable collection of Arbus’ photos are on display, albeit in a very low, almost sleepy light (I suppose it’s for the sake of the now decades-old prints). The evidence is fairly clear: Arbus could penetrate any group of outsiders from the 1950’s and 60’s, and let’s face it, that’s about the time when outsiders were at their zenith. Arbus wasn’t at all an insider to any of these communities of exotics. She grew up posh, while in another world, her photographic subjects inhabited what would have been a no-go zone for her and her kind.
By instilling confidence between her and the circus freak, nudist, or any other nutter/oddball on the other side of the camera, she was able to make friends through the assurance of professionalism, and get the straight-on shot that the subject rightly deserved. Imagine if you did that now? You’d probably be dragged by heavy chains behind some hillbilly’s pickup truck, or be sucked into an awkward, experimental religion you had no idea existed until a few short minutes ago. It’s not the kind of thing most sane people do these days.
Diane Arbus’ art is more about trust than about the subjects she shot, or the photographs themselves for that matter. But these days, these contemporary days, we could probably use more trust between divisive groups of war-mongering gangs. We need a Diane Arbus for places like Isreal, Afghanistan, Fox News, Millwall Football Stadium. Well, maybe let’s start with Israel and Afghanistan and see how that goes before attempting an all-or-nothing game at Millwall.






