Diane Arbus In Singlar Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs

Read and reflect upon the chapter on Diane Arbus in Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs by Sophie Howarth (2005, London: Tate Publishing).

This essay begins with the statement:

‘The fictions we make about photographs are as unreliable as they are unavoidable’.

This is a very telling statement and it applies to all art, not just photographs. They are in the hands of those who interpret it.

A Young Brooklyn Family Going for a Sunday Outing, N.Y.C., 1966. © Diane Arbus

Jobey writes an eleven-page essay about this image asking leading questions based upon her preconceptions about the family depicted in the show and from the brief description that the photographer gave to it.

We can never fully know what is happening with the subjects a photograph because we can not see inside the subject’s mind, even as a photographer we can always fully know because you can only go upon what the subject tells us.

What a person writes about or how the viewer interprets a photograph says as much about the writer/viewer as it does about the photograph itself. I could be cynical because that there is ow such thing as wrong in art and write anything, but I’m not that cynical. I was before I undertook the Introduction to Film Culture course there I learnt how to interpret and now I see metaphors in TV programs and film that I didn’t see before.

References

Howarth, S. (2005) Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs. London: Tate Publishing