Press release | Amsterdam, 22 June 2012
Diane Arbus
26 October 2012 - 13 January 2013
Diane Arbus (1923-1971) revolutionized the art she
practiced. Her bold subject matter and photographic approach
produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in
its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Her gift for
rendering strange those things we consider most familiar, and for
uncovering the familiar within the exotic, enlarges our
understanding of ourselves.
Arbus found most of her subjects in New York City, a place that
she explored as both a known geography and as a foreign land,
photographing people she discovered during the 1950s and 1960s. She
was committed to photography as a medium that tangles with the
facts. Her contemporary anthropology-portraits of couples,
children, carnival performers, nudists, middle-class families,
transvestites, zealots, eccentrics, and celebrities-stands as an
allegory of the human experience, an exploration of the
relationship between appearance and identity, illusion and belief,
theater and reality.
This exhibition of two hundred photographs affords an
opportunity to explore the origins, scope, and aspirations of a
wholly original force in photography. It includes all of the
artist's iconic photographs as well as many that have never before
been exhibited in the Netherlands. Even the earliest examples of
her work demonstrate Arbus's distinctive sensibility through the
expression on a face, someone's posture, the
character of the light, and the
personal implications of objects in
a room or landscape. These elements,
animated by the singular relationship between the photographer and
her subject, conspire to implicate the viewer with the force of a
personal encounter.
Much has been written and said about Diane Arbus's work since
her death in 1971-so much that it has sometimes made it difficult
to see the work on its own terms. Foam is pleased to present,
perhaps for the first time, a major retrospective of Arbus'
uniquely powerful photographs in the true eloquence of their
silence. The show will enable each viewer to encounter the images
much as the photographer encountered her subjects: directly and
unencumbered by preconceptions.
Visitors to the exhibition seeking
knowledge about Arbus's life and
working methods will be able to
explore three additional separate galleries containing
biographical material, books, personal notebooks, correspondence
and other writings in which the artist articulates the goals,
obstacles, and strategies that went into making the pictures.
This exhibition has been organized by Jeu de Paume, Paris, in
collaboration with the Estate of Diane Arbus LLC, New York and with
the participation of Fotomuseum Winterthur and Martin-Gropius-Bau
Berlin.
The exhibition at Foam has been made possible by the generous
support of the Turing Foundation, Hotel De L'Europe and the Embassy
of the United States of America.
Diane Arbus can be seen from 26 October
2012 - 13 January 2013 at Foam. Open daily 10 am - 6 pm, Thurs/Fri
10 am - 9 pm. Tickets: € 10 (includes surcharge of
1,50).