About
Timothy Taylor Gallery is delighted to present a major exhibition of works by American photographer, Diane Arbus (1923 - 1971). The exhibition will comprise sixty photographs, many not seen before in the UK, and which span the period from 1957 to 1971.
One of the most original and influential photographers of the twentieth century, Arbus's subject matter is people; adolescent couples, young children, sophisticated socialites, circus performers, nudists, eccentrics and transvestites. In each instance, the subjects are simply documented, captured in their own context. As Arbus emphasised, ...I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself." The gaze is direct. The relationship between sitter and photographer self-conscious and unique. Arbus is our witness. In 'Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962', a young, grimacing child confronts the camera. His expression manic, his intention unclear, he is caught and preserved in the moment. Arbus exposes the extraordinariness of the everyday. As John Szarkowski, organiser of the 1967 Museum of Modern Art exhibition New Documents, emphasised, "The portraits of Diane Arbus show that all of us - the most ordinary and the most exotic of us - are on closer scrutiny remarkable". This is particularly evinced by, for example, 'Puerto Rican woman with a beauty mark, N.Y.C. 1965', a portrait striking in its unflinching honesty, or 'Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C. 1963', where the pathos of the child emulating the grown-up is inescapable.
