They have such awesome attitudes about them. I don't know if Tübke is just good at spotting attitude or if he poses them (I really hope not but I suspect so, since many have similar postures) but they all look like they think they're the shit.Of course, this woman actually is:
I want to model my entire wardrobe after this photo.I'm no expert on photography, so all I can do is go with the stuff I read, which cites Arbus as a predecessor of this style. However, Arbus became best known for photographing "outsiders" in the middle of the 1900s:
Her unrelentingly direct photographs of people who live on the edge of societal acceptance, as well as those photographs depicting supposedly "normal" people in a way that sharply outlines the cracks in their public masks, were controversial at the time of their creation and remain so today....
Arbus's pictures are almost invariably confrontational: the subjects look directly at the camera and are sharply rendered, lit by direct flash or other frontal lighting. Her subjects appear to be perfectly willing, if not eager, to reveal themselves and their flaws to her lens.
She said of her pictures, "What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's.... That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own." And of her subjects who were physically unusual, she said, "Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. [These people] were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats." artphotogallery.org
Alright, make that three. Shortly after I started writing this entry, I checked facebook, and one of the things on my news feed was that Tamera had posted a link to the Wellcome Collection, a series of photos taken of people shortly before and then just after their deaths. Quite different, but also striking.
Arbus photos via http://www.artphotogallery.org/02/artphotogallery/photographers/diane_arbus_01.html
[discovery via bits and bobbins.]
No comments:
Post a Comment