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Diane Arbus: In the Beginning” is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, January 21–April 30. Biographer Arthur Lubow writes of a time Diane recollected being a girl at summer camp, when all of the other girls were bitten by leeches, and she was disappointed she had not: “She complained that she had rarely felt anything in her entire life. She was untouched by the ordinary joys and pains that make people feel alive. This was her prison.” This somber and mysterious photo shows severely handicapped patients walking and stumbling along dressed in their Halloween masks. During their outdoor walk under grey skies and moonlight, Arbus makes a strong use of the camera's flash. The scene revealed goes a level beyond the usual photos of Arbus's consenting subjects living in the outside world. These patients are supposed to be in a safer place, and that location casts them, and the process of photographing them, in a different light. In addition, the scene is reminiscent of James Ensor's ghastly portrayals of the rich and corrupt, an association that adds to the complexity of interpreting this series of photographs. Arbus captures a boy on the cusp of adolescence yet still playing with toys—but the object is a plastic grenade, an object of war,” said Hughes. “There’s something troubling about him playing solider—the ongoing war efforts were not lost on a little kid in Central Park.”

Does Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park say more about Diane Arbus than the subject of the photograph? In the last two years of her life, she gained access to a home for the mentally handicapped in Vineland, New Jersey and photographed the residents on multiple occasions. She originally wanted to produce a book on this singular subject, which is something she had not done previously. The images were not exhibited during her lifetime, however a book was published in 1995 titled "Untitled" that consisted of 51 images and was published posthumously by her daughter Doon in conjunction with the Aperture Foundation. This body of work is ethically complex; for it is not certain that the subjects in the images gave consent, let alone were able to give consent. Arbus was sensitive to the issue of acquiring releases for her magazine work, and some images were pulled from the 1967 MoMA show because she didn't have releases from some subjects. Advocates for special needs say that the subjects probably didn't give permission or understand what being photographed entails. Diane Arbus, Child With Toy Hand Grenade, Central Park, NYC, 1962 , is for sale at artnet Auctions, March 14–28, 2017. Diane Nemerov grew up in New York City in a wealthy Jewish family who owned a successful fur company named Russeks. She was the second of three children who all grew-up to be creatives. (Howard, the eldest, grew up to be a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and the younger, Renee became an artist). Raised in a series of lavish homes in Upper East Side of New York City, her childhood consisted of maids and governesses helping raise her and her siblings. Diane's mother, Gertrude, struggled with bouts of depression preventing her from intellectually supporting Diane while her father, David, stayed busy with work. The rest of her life, she would try separating herself from her family and upbringing. Many have thought that she did this through her work, as an extension of her personal suffering, for she felt oppressed in her own community and felt akin to her subjects as a social outcast. Arbus engages with the event with a critical lens into the otherwise superficial meaning of ceremonies that make up our everyday existence. Her portrayal of judgment requires of us to ask ourselves if there is any one true meaning of the conventions of physical female beauty. Arbus wrote, "It took about ten hours of interviews, sashaying, and performing what they called their talent and the poor girls looked so exhausted by the effort to be themselves that they continually made the fatal mistakes which were in fact themselves..."Follaco, Gala. A Sense of the City: Modes of Urban Representation in the Works of Nagai Kafū (1879-1959). Leiden: Brill, 2017. Arbus found intrigue and conjured beauty in unlikely subjects, and made remarkable portraits of people that were not often deemed "fit" to be in front of the lens of a camera. She sought out unique characters on the fringes of society for her work, and said to this, "I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them." This went a long way from the art that is often thought to be reserved only for the aesthetically pleasing, as opposed to showing the "real" or "true" world. In the 1972 documentary about Arbus’ life titled Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus, she is quoted as saying that people have an actual self and an intended self, and that she liked to capture the gap between the two. She wanted to capture a person disarmed, when the way in which someone tries to present themselves to the world fades, and their internal or “true” self comes through. Of course, as the photographer she has the artistic liberty to determine what she portrays as a person’s “true” self. For example, in the aforementioned work Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, NYC, she apparently determined that the grim, frustrated face of the boy was most accurate to his true self, “truer” in some way than the silly, playful child in the other photos that she opted not to publish. Jacobs, Steven L., and Zev Garber. Maven in Blue Jeans: A Festschrift in Honor of Zev Garber. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009.

Arbus employed the techniques of documentary or photojournalistic photography to represent real life subjects in their natural environments. However, she made the resulting works uniquely her own, as her personal journey was always embedded in the imagery she photographed. There is a multiplicity of the subject, for you can't think of the image without thinking of the set of qualities that made the image possible; which is to say, it is difficult to imagine the photograph taking place without the thought of Arbus present. She was very public about her feelings of being a social outcast within her own community, and sought solace in her subjects on the fringe. In turn, she channeled her frustration and by extension, her outsider feelings, into her work and sought out the eccentric. It wasn't enough to capture a likeness; through multiple visits over many years she gained the access and the trust with her subjects, which often became friendships. "What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's," she once wrote. "And that's what all this is a little bit about. That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own." Henderson, Jane. "Sibling incest, WU poet discussed in upcoming Diane Arbus biography." St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 2, 2016, https://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and-literature/book-blog/s…

Keep collections to yourself or inspire other shoppers! Keep in mind that anyone can view public collections - they may also appear in recommendations and other places. To mark what would have been her 94th birthday, artnet Auctions is offering a print of Child With Toy Hand Grenade, Central Park, NYC, 1962, one of her most famous images. A skinny young boy, named Colin Wood, is shown in Central Park, a perturbed look on his face as he clutches a toy grenade in his hand. This photograph is of Nat and June Tarnapol, a successful agent and publisher in the pop music business and his well-coiffed wife. When Arbus stopped June in a bookstore to ask her to sit for a photograph, it was because she was impeccably dressed. Arbus wrote, "...she suggested I wait until warm weather so I can do it [photograph] around the pool!" Yet, Arbus did not want to recreate an idyllic family portrait. Once photographing the wealthy family at their home in the New York suburbs, Arbus spent almost eight hours shooting the family. Her truth-by-exhaustion technique made her ultimate photo far more interesting. It is a powerful statement confirming that traditional family roles can be stifling. Her cathartic uncovering of this sense gave rise to a bold photographic narrative that became the emblematic and diarist project detailing Arbus's own life and views. By understanding this image further, one understands how the artist's personal biography can affect the work they seek to produce, which is a theme consistent in Modern and Post-Modern Art. Her findings eventually led her to receive a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation to photograph "American Rites, Manners, and Customs" in 1963. In her proposal she wrote, "I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present, I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful." This opened up doors for Arbus, and she was awarded a renewal for the Guggenheim grant in 1965, and again in 1966. Of this she wrote, "The Fellowship enabled me to go far enough to find the way to go further. I have learned to get past the door, from the outside to the inside. One milieu leads to another."

This image is often criticized as being disturbing to viewers. Arbus sought to expose the underbelly of society, which is often overlooked or ignored. What becomes apparent is the more insistent, larger narrative of American sensibility, lost in the social upheavals of the 1960s. Critic Susan Sontag wrote about Arbus' aesthetic insensibilities in her book, On Photography, which is a very influential piece of critique questioning the legitimacy of photography as an art form, written in 1977. She categorized Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C, among Arbus' work as a whole, as picturing people who are "pathetic, pitiable, as well as repulsive." This image remains an icon despite Sontag's scathing review, and has continued to grow in fame as the visual impact of the image is haunting and timeless. Around 1968, it became evident to Arbus that she would need other sources of income beyond photographic journalism to sustain herself. Her magazine publications dwindled as her work appeared less imaginative. To earn more money, she reluctantly began teaching college photography courses at Parsons and at Cooper Union and later gave a master class at her home in Westbeth. At this same time, she also grew restless of her camera materials and often wrote about losing her fondness of flash photography that once amazed her. In 1959 when Allan and Diane separated, she found a renewed sense of purpose for her personal work. She cut down her hair, transformed her apartment into a working space filled with photos pinned up on the walls, and slept on a mattress situated on the floor. Arbus scraped together a living for herself and her two daughters through commercial work with magazines. Most notably she worked for Esquire Magazine, which sought to publish "new journalism" which employed literary techniques to enhance reporting, and gave her a unique opportunity that helped develop her artistic voice. She improvised childcare through the help of friends and family and started life as a working artist. Allan continued working as a fashion photographer, making the firm's darkroom available to Arbus and assisting her with technical matters. Photography allowed her transformation from an uptown, private-school-educated wife with a coy personality into someone who longed for an artistic voice independent from her bourgeois upbringing. She felt akin to the underrepresented and gravitated toward subjects that allowed a morbid fascination by merely looking. Alex Mar, “The Cost of Diane Arbus's Life on the Edge,” The Cut, July 12, 2016, https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/diane-arbus-c-v-r.html. Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus (Creative Arts Television Archive, Contemporary Arts Media (distributor), 1972).Grenade light Sign , Neon like , Grenade lamp, Grenade Wall decor, Grenade night light, edge Lit LED, Grenade art

According to The Washington Post, Colin does not specifically remember Arbus taking the photo, but that he was likely "imitating a face I'd seen in war movies, which I loved watching at the time." Later, as a teenager, he was angry at Arbus for "making fun of a skinny kid with a sailor suit", though he enjoys the photograph now. This is one of the most significant photographic images in the history of fine art photography,” she added, noting that the image is colored by the spirit of the 1960s and the escalation of the Vietnam War. There is also controversy over Arbus's relationships with her subjects. In one infamous series, a number of photos focus on an interracial couple, but one of the photos includes a nude Arbus on top of the man. This series, and related rumors of Arbus's modus operandi have different interpretations: maybe she was engaged in an orgy with this couple, or maybe she always stripped nude when photographing nudists, or it might have been her way to make the couple more comfortable. All of this, of course, sums up to an artist that is very provocative and regularly gets re-interpreted in the age of post-modern art - a time of art-making that accepts and embraces a number of these practices (that Arbus may or may not have pioneered).Anthony Bannon, “The Biography Diane Arbus Always Deserved,” The Buffalo News, June 26, 2016, https://buffalonews.com/lifestyles/the-biography-diane-arbus-always-des….