DIANE ARBUS – IN THE PARK
2017-03-27The exhibition will be the first to focus solely on Arbus’s photographs made in Central Park and Washington Square, theaters of public interaction that provided fertile territory for the creation of many of her most striking and original images. All of the works on view were made within four miles of where they will now be exhibited.
For Arbus, the city’s parks were arenas of rich and unpredictable encounter. The exhibition will interweave rarely seen photographs, such as A very thin man in Central Park, N. Y .C. 1961, and Couple talking on a path, N. Y .C. 1970, alongside well-known images such as Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962, and Young man and his pregnant wife in W ashington Square Park, N. Y .C. 1965. The majority of these works were the result of a single chance meeting between Arbus and her subjects. Several, including Girl in a beret in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1958, Three girls at a Puerto Rican Festival, N.Y.C. 1962, and Susan Sontag and her son on bench, N.Y.C., 1965 are being exhibited here for the first time.
Arbus began photographing in Central Park in 1956, at the very beginning of her work as a serious artist, and returned repeatedly to the city’s parks over her brief, fifteen-year career. Among the last pictures in the exhibition is A young man and his girlfriend with hot dogs in the park, N.Y.C., made in 1971, the year of her death. The exhibition thus surveys the evolution of Arbus’s style (from smaller to larger negatives, from smaller to larger prints), as well as the evolution of her singular approach to the people she photographed.
Opposite – Two friends in the park, N.Y.C. 1965
Exhibition runs from May 2nd through to June 24th, 2017
Lévy Gorvy
909 Madison Avenue
New York
NY 10021
