"A Naughty Thing to Do"
How Diane Arbus Pushed my Writing and my Venture into Fine Art Photography
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The undergraduate journalism class I enjoyed the most focused on a medium I had never studied or practiced before: photojournalism. Years before digital swept us away, this class introduced me not just to the basic rule of composition — the rule of thirds — but in how to load and develop film and make my own prints. While my class and I were given assignments to practice our photojournalism lessons, I was more interested in photography’s art. My professor showed some photos by Bob Black when he discussed composition and how to dodge and shade our prints. His direct and crafted images haunted me.
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A little over a year before, Robert Mapplethorpe and his controversial photos sparked a new chapter in the ongoing debate of the U.S. government funding the arts. The legacy media and CNN showed his controversial images, blurred of course, along with his photos of flowers and celebrities. Mapplethorpe’s black-and-white pictures captivated me because of their composition and how he used lighting.
![Black-and-white photos. Left -- woman with black hair takes a scissors to her hair. Middle: A dark-haired man kissed a man with blond hair. Right: A woman wearing a long white dress reclines and places her right arm on her head.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8b47f25c-ffc3-4839-bcd3-ca74e74ea7f8_1000x1007.jpeg)
![Black-and-white photos. Left -- woman with black hair takes a scissors to her hair. Middle: A dark-haired man kissed a man with blond hair. Right: A woman wearing a long white dress reclines and places her right arm on her head.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F90486fce-a279-4f1c-b66d-b7eb2857e471_1779x1187.jpeg)
![Black-and-white photos. Left -- woman with black hair takes a scissors to her hair. Middle: A dark-haired man kissed a man with blond hair. Right: A woman wearing a long white dress reclines and places her right arm on her head.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F656b9091-dfa1-4cb1-bf48-f23a9cc69e3c_781x799.webp)
A year later Sally Mann’s Immediate Family created acclaim and controversy. Like Mapplethorpe, Mann captured disquieting images that made people viscerally react. What made people apoplectic was that Mann captured several photos of her young children nude or physically harmed. I remember her photography capturing my imagination once I saw Candy Cigarette. I learned that photographs were art like prose and poetry and could tell stories outside the photojournalism genre.
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I could have taken an advanced photojournalism class as an undergrad, but I put 110% of my focus into my writing. Even as an MFA in Writing student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I switched the photography class I had originally chosen for my final elective with a teaching assistantship opportunity. During and after that experience, I longed to return to study fine art photography, a longing that arose after my MFA fiction advisor Janet Desaulniers mentioned Diane Arbus to me.
After that session, I looked for anything I could find on Diane (pronounced DEE-ann) Arbus. When I found a used copies of her posthumous book Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph and Patricia Bosworth’s Diane Arbus biography, I better understood why Janet mentioned her to me. Arbus not only captured those on the margins but allowed their stories to be told with empathy and truth. People who life rejected and outright ignored she placed in the spotlight.
As a photography assistant to her husband and childhood sweetheart Allan Arbus, who later played psychiatrist Major Sidney Freeman on M.A.S.H., Diane would not only help him set up his fashion shots but attend to the models. Alan even admitted it degraded her and forced her into the background.1
Though a fantasy based on the Bosworth biography, the above scene from the film Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus addresses her early activity in photography and dissatisfaction with it. A decade into their successful work together, Diane announced to Allan, “I can't do it anymore. I'm not going to do it anymore.”2
As a white Jewish child of wealth and immense privilege, Arbus was shielded from life’s realities and those on the margins. After breaking from the posed sterility of 1950s fashion photography, she captured those realities in her photography that forced people to see. Within her photographs, I recognized how my own fiction that addresses mental illness, physical illness, sexual abuse and violence somewhat mirrors Arbus.
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I will not be able to purchase a Canon camera until next week, but for the past month I have been reading books and watching videos on fine art photography. With a closer eye, I’m studying the work of Arbus, other photographers, and painters like Goya, Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi. Though I have limited space and light and only my phone’s camera, I have been practicing and staying mindful of composition. Early images of fine art photographers do not hint their future art, but I wanted to share a photo I took of my daughter’s cat Puma Thurman a few nights ago with my phone.
Join the salon! Share your thoughts in the comments. Some questions to consider and help you get started.
1.) Do you consider photography art? Why or why not?
2.) What do you notice first when you see a photograph?
3.) Do you have a favorite photographer? Who is it? Why are they your favorite?
4.) Do you like having your picture taken? Why or why don’t you?
5.) If you are a writer, do you also practice another art?
6.) Do you like black and white photography? Why or why not?
7.) Do you like color photography? Why or why not?
8.) If you study or practice another visual fine art form, what elements are you mindful of as you create a painting, sketch, sculpture, collage, or digital art?
Arthur Lubow, Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer, read by Colleen Marlow, (New York: Random House, 2016), Tantor Audio, 17 hr., 52 min., 01:19-00-0:1:27.
Lubow, 00:36-00:38.
Super. Will restack.