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Diane Arbus

People and Other Singularities

April 19–May 27, 2011
Beverly Hills

Installation View, photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View, photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Installation View Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

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Works Exhibited

Diane Arbus, A castle in Disneyland, Cal., 1962 Gelatin silver print, 20 × 16 inches (50.8 × 40.6 cm)© Estate of Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus, A castle in Disneyland, Cal., 1962

Gelatin silver print, 20 × 16 inches (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
© Estate of Diane Arbus

About

...a thing is not seen because it is visible, but conversely, visible because it is seen...
—Passage underlined by Diane Arbus in her copy of The Works of Plato

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present "People and Other Singularities," a survey of the photographs of Diane Arbus spanning 1956 to 1971. This will be the most extensive exhibition of Arbus's work in Los Angeles since "Diane Arbus: Revelations" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2004, and will contain several photographs that have never before been exhibited.

By now Arbus's unsettling social portraits are burned into collective memory. Although her work appeared in only a few group exhibitions during her lifetime, her fearless and unique images exerted a revolutionary influence on subsequent generations of artists and filmmakers. Her idiosyncratic anthropological study of insiders, outsiders, and everyone in between proposes an alternative allegory of mainstream postwar America while investigating the correlation between appearance and inner self, theater and reality.

Arbus found many of her subjects in her native city of New York, which she explored as much for its subversive and exotic attractions as for its familiar terrain. The New York pictures were augmented with visits to Pennsylvania, Florida and California, where she photographed vernacular contests and festivals as well as all manner of public and private rituals. Among the photographs made in Los Angeles on view will be A house on a hill, Hollywood, Ca., 1963, Christopher Isherwood, California, 1962, Miss Venice Beach, Cal., 1962, Muscle man contest with onlooker, Cal., 1962, and Rocks on wheels, Disneyland, Cal., 1963.

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