1) Diane
Arbus was an American photographer and writer. She is famous for photographs of
marginalized people – giants, dwarfs, transgender, freaks and mentally retired people. She was
interested in those perceived by the others as ugly or weird. The artist used
twin-lens reflex Rolleiflex camera which produced more detailed square images
and a waist-level viewfinder. The viewfinder allowed Arbus to connect with her
subject in a different way than using a standard eye-level viewfinder. Aslo she
used a twin-lens reflex Mamiya camera with flash in addition to the Rolleiflex.
2) Arbus
started as a fashion photographer and was successful working for such popular magazines
as Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire etcetera. She hated fashion photography and was
more interested in photographing exotic people. Her methods included
establishing a strong personal relationship with her subjects and she
photographed some of them over many years. She was passionate about the
question of identity, normality in freakishness and the freakishness in
normality. The mane subject was not the physical weirdness but uniqueness and
individuality of a person she was photographing.
3) This
summer I read a book named “Ptosis” by Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel. In her
story a patient who is suffering from ptosis (falling of the upper eyelid) and
wants to get rid of it is seen by other protagonist (a photographer) as attractive
and unique. According to the protagonist it is precisely the problem of ptosis
that made that patient remarkable and unusual. I really enjoyed this story
because it questions our idea about what is normal and what is weird. When I
see pictures of Diane Arbus I have the same feeling and the same questions that
I had while reading Nettel’s novel: why
do we consider something weird and how are social constructions work and affect the society?
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