Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

I have chosen to write about Diane Arbus, a an American photographer, as i find her work to be the most inspirational. Diana Arbus is most well known for her black and white photographs of taken of 'marginal' people (such as nudist, dwarfs or transgender people, just people that are considered to be unusual or 'ugly'. I like Diane Arbus's work a lot as she takes pictures of things that would be 'disgusting' for people to look at in the 40's and 50's, which was then she was most active in photography. Diane Arbus was known as the 'photographer of freaks' to many but i personally respect her for her work as she made a lot of thing, such as being Transgender, less of a taboo subject for many.

This first picture i have chosen of Diane Arbus's is one of her most famous of a Transgender (wo)man. I like this picture the most out of all of the ones she has taken as  being Transgender was a huge taboo topic in the 50's, it was seen as disgusting and highly frowned upon so by Diane Arbus tang this photograph i feel as though it was progress in making Transgender less of a taboo topic like it is today. In this picture Diane Arbus pays particular attention to the form and the lines on his face. When looking at form in the picture its very subtle but in certain places like around his nose and his eye you are able to see that its a three dimensional person in a two dimensional picture. And the lines underneath his eyes and on his hands provide assurance that this photo is of an actually person, not just of a painting.

This photograph is another one of my favourites taken by Diane Arbus. What i like most about this photograph is that although they are twins so they look similar and they are dressed the same, they have completely different facial expressions. The one on the left looks expressionless, making her look quite sad whereas the town on the right looks a lot more happier. I like this picture as it shoes that in the case of people that are the same in so many ways, like twins, everyone feels differently, which is a good message to show as a lot of people just assume children are happy but they're not. In this image tone is used very well as it shows the hollows and defines their faces, making them look more three dimensional.

This images shows a young, skinny boy holding a toy grenade with a slightly worried look on his face. I like this picture as i believe it shows the problem of child soldiers. The way he's holding a toy grenade and has  very worried look on his face shows that children do not want to be soldiers, they are raised with all of thee violent toys like guns and grenades they are being raised to fight in wars. The use of form in this picture shows the the shadows of the tress behind him making them look more three dimensional and the dark tones of his shorts make him stand out against the light tones of the background.

In this picture it shows two 'regular' sized people and a 'giant' person in a living room. This is another one of Diane Arbus's photographs that show 'abnormality' in society. I like this photo of Diane Arbus's  as it shows something that people don't like to see. People try to avoid looking at things that are different or unexplained as it 'scares' people, so by Diane Arbus taking a picture like this it would be weird for people to look at as it shoes the differences in society. In this picture Arbus uses depth to show the heigh of the 'giant' compared to the 'normal' people next to him. Also form is used to make the people look three dimensional in a two dimensional photograph.

Summary and influence paragraph;
To summarise Diane Arbus's work, she takes black and white photographs of topics that were very controversial in that time. She looked into the abnormality of people and the reaction people had when looking at it. Out of the majority of photographers i have looked at, i like Arbus's work the most as she looked at the tone and form of the photograph as well as trying to make taboo topics less of a big thing in society. From looking at Diane Arbus's work i was influenced to look more into the tone of my photographs. As in Arbus's work there isn't a lot of contrast between the tone of the subject and the tone of the background, so when we did the shot for tone, i ensured that some of my photographs only had a slight contrast between the subject and the background.