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Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Remembering Diane Arbus 

She died so young. I love her work, but thinking about her always makes me sad.

Here's a story from David J. Skal's "The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror" about Diane Arbus that may not be that well known to a lot of her fans:

In the shadow of monster mania lurked another dark figure, whose own fascination with distorted, freakish images had not yet achieved the notoriety for which it was ultimately destined. The publisher [of Famous Monsters of Filmland] James Warren, however, was familiar with her photographic work and so hired her to document a group of his magazine's readers. The resulting photo, never published but described in a Rolling Stone feature in 1974, was titled Bronx, New York, 1964: Meeting the Famous Monsters. The photographer grouped the five young boys in front of a dilapidated house. Their faces were concealed by horrible masks. When one of the boys' hands nervously or inadvertently touched his crotch, the photographer released her shutter.

Diane Arbus, den mother of the damned, had found her image.


We miss you, Diane.

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