Yesterday I put on a funny accent and with my friend Katheryn (whose wedding I photographed at the Thali Cafe earlier this year) we hopped over the water to Cardiff and headed to the Museum of Wales to see an exhibition of work by portrait photographer Diane Arbus.
Until her suicide in 1979 she photographed a variety of portraits, most of which – judging from the exhibition – were focused on the strangeness of life.
She seemed to seek out the weird and eerie, especially in the normal and everyday. But the sad thing is that the photos seemed to speak louder about the woman who took them than the subjects she photographed.
Arbus focused on the marginalised in society – disabled people, transvestites and the poor, among others. But instead of photographing these people with dignity and compassion, her work seemed to have a mean undercurrent. She chose images which were obviously from a series and she’d picked the photo where her subject looked the worst or was in the middle of speaking. She suffered from depression, and I wonder if this contributed to what she chose to photograph, or the frames she chose to keep from each session. It can’t be easy when you are depressed yourself to see the positive and good in others, and the exhibition of 69 images itself certainly conveyed to us the feeling of hopelessness that she perhaps felt herself.
It’s not really fair for me to write too much more as Arbus is no longer around to speak for herself about why she chose her subjects or particular images above others. But I came away from the exhibition thinking that I should like to do an exhibition myself – but this time one of joy, showing the best of human nature. I’m brainstorming ideas already!
To view more of her work visit her wikipedia page here (I can’t post her images as they are under copyright) or visit the Museum of Wales website.
