Lot 421 | A family one evening in a nudist camp, PA

ARBUS, DIANE
New York 1923 - 1971

Title: A family one evening in a nudist camp, PA.
Date: 1965.
Technique: Gelatin silver print on Agfa paper.
Depiction Size: 37 x 37cm.
Sheet Size: 50,5 x 40,5cm.
Notation: Inscribed (verso).


On the backside of the sheet is a stamp with the 1972 copyright notice of the Esate of Diane Arbus. In addition, the stamp "a Diane Arbus print" with the reg. no.: #4090-12-60-1620. Including the confirming signature of the administrator Doon Arbus

Provenance:
- Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Diane Arbus is one of the most interesting American photographers. In a special way she captures the grotesque and the different in her much vaunted photographs. She began as a fashion photographer, but soon turned away from the false glamour of this illusory world to devote herself to the absurd everyday. Marginalized groups, diseases and peculiarities become her central subjects. Dwarves, giants, transvestites, but also celebrities populate her unique images. She always succeeds in capturing the background - a psychological movement - without showing the people photographed.

In the 1960s, she took several pictures of nudist camps - revolutionary depictions in todays's still prudish America. The work presented here also depicts a family at nudist camps in Pennsylvania. The tail fin of a car, which can still be seen in the picture on the right, locates the work in 1960s America and gives a hint that the family is taking a break on a lawn. Although the people portrayed are aware of the shot and look out of the picture, they do not assume any particular pose, nor do they flash a superimposed smile across their faces. They seem to show themselves as they are. In the familiar everyday life, however, the nudity of the "imperfect" bodies, which is quite naturally displayed, creates contradictions. No glamour, but a bizarrely authentic document draws us under its spell.