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Diane Arbus: Untitled
Untitled may well be Arbus's most transcendent, most romantic vision. It is a celebration of the singularity and connectedness of people and it demonstrates Arbus' remarkable visual lyricism.
112 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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382 people want to read
About the author
Diane Arbus
47 books179 followersPeople best know portraits of prostitutes, transvestites, persons with physical deformities, and other unconventional subjects of American photographer Diane Arbus.
Diane Arbus noted dwarfs, giants, and ordinary citizens in poses and settings on the fringes of society.
Arbus used 35-mm cameras to create her early work but adopted the Rolleiflex medium format twin-lens reflex before the 1960s. This format provided a square aspect ratio, higher image resolution, and a waist-level viewfinder, not a standard eye, which allowed Arbus to connect in different ways. Arbus also experimented with the use of flashes in daylight, allowing her to highlight and separate from the background.
In July 1971, Arbus ingested a large quantity of barbiturates and then slashed her wrists to commit suicide in Greenwich Village at the age of 48 years.
Diane Arbus noted dwarfs, giants, and ordinary citizens in poses and settings on the fringes of society.
Arbus used 35-mm cameras to create her early work but adopted the Rolleiflex medium format twin-lens reflex before the 1960s. This format provided a square aspect ratio, higher image resolution, and a waist-level viewfinder, not a standard eye, which allowed Arbus to connect in different ways. Arbus also experimented with the use of flashes in daylight, allowing her to highlight and separate from the background.
In July 1971, Arbus ingested a large quantity of barbiturates and then slashed her wrists to commit suicide in Greenwich Village at the age of 48 years.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 29, 2008
the first of her books i acquired and still the most moving.
something changed in her eye.
something was added to the clear-eyed openness of her most famous images. i think it is joy or peace -but words will always fail. that's the essence of photography and why - a word person to the core - i am so grateful for the place she takes me. the afterword by her daughter is wonderful in every way.
something changed in her eye.
something was added to the clear-eyed openness of her most famous images. i think it is joy or peace -but words will always fail. that's the essence of photography and why - a word person to the core - i am so grateful for the place she takes me. the afterword by her daughter is wonderful in every way.
June 2, 2025
I think this book has finally helped me to realize the purpose of Arbus photography. I’ve been studying her work and trying to learn more about her because I’ve honestly been very disturbed by a lot of her work. I’ve really felt that it was exploitation for sensationalism of the time.
Especially when I read her words in other books calling her subjects freaks. Then when I first looked at the photos of this book I had a very visceral reaction. I wanted to cry and get angry at the same time because I felt the intent behind the photos was bad. But then I read the forward by her daughter at the end and I realized that Diane was trying to expose on film as it were, the very people that no one wanted to look at. These people who were mentally retarded as she put it, were so unapologetically themselves.
Her daughter said no other subject posed for her so unself-consciously and that to me is so apparent in these photos. Diane showed people the way they were. As facts. That’s why she said that she believed some things would never have been seen if it wasn’t for her photographs. It’s as if she was holding the photos to your face and saying here look at them! They exist whether you like it or not! Get over it! I love that.
Especially when I read her words in other books calling her subjects freaks. Then when I first looked at the photos of this book I had a very visceral reaction. I wanted to cry and get angry at the same time because I felt the intent behind the photos was bad. But then I read the forward by her daughter at the end and I realized that Diane was trying to expose on film as it were, the very people that no one wanted to look at. These people who were mentally retarded as she put it, were so unapologetically themselves.
Her daughter said no other subject posed for her so unself-consciously and that to me is so apparent in these photos. Diane showed people the way they were. As facts. That’s why she said that she believed some things would never have been seen if it wasn’t for her photographs. It’s as if she was holding the photos to your face and saying here look at them! They exist whether you like it or not! Get over it! I love that.
November 1, 2015
Diane Arbus had a uniquely unflinching vision. This is the group of subjects most uniquely well-suited for it - the severely mentally disabled.
The photographs at first seem almost exploitative - like dioramas for one of the freak shows Arbus loved so much. But you look closer and you realize - there's a basic innocence to every single one of her subjects. It's a basic, yet fundamental thing which is felt throughout this work - they hold hands, pose like nervous children, smile as wide as possible through rotting teeth - you feel a deep sympathy for them, a wonder of what it must be like to be trapped in a body like that for life with no chance of improvement, no future but the present. You can see how a subject like this could be so entrancing to Arbus in the waning years of her life, through her deep depressions.
The most beautiful photos in this book follow the same basic structure - the subject stands alone in a field, his or her background in blurred obscurity behind them, any other people unrecognizable as anything but their most basic forms in silhouette. The world seems to fall away from them - nothing exists in any sort of clarity but themselves and the ground they stand on. The photos bleed a desperate feeling of loneliness - of true isolation from everything around them. They seem either wholly unsure of themselves or defiantly embracing a mode of life at atypical angles from the rest of the society which shuns them and sweeps them into the cracks of existence to be politely erased from mind. But these photographs force you to confront the ignored - to realize exactly what it is we somehow have grown to fear - that wrath of mental disease which the uninflicted can never truly understand (something which terrifies us). We see the unfortunate victims of genetics as what they really are - people. Real, feeling, ultimately understandable people. And as uncomfortable as this process may be, it is completely necessary, and ultimately a beautiful thing.
The photographs at first seem almost exploitative - like dioramas for one of the freak shows Arbus loved so much. But you look closer and you realize - there's a basic innocence to every single one of her subjects. It's a basic, yet fundamental thing which is felt throughout this work - they hold hands, pose like nervous children, smile as wide as possible through rotting teeth - you feel a deep sympathy for them, a wonder of what it must be like to be trapped in a body like that for life with no chance of improvement, no future but the present. You can see how a subject like this could be so entrancing to Arbus in the waning years of her life, through her deep depressions.
The most beautiful photos in this book follow the same basic structure - the subject stands alone in a field, his or her background in blurred obscurity behind them, any other people unrecognizable as anything but their most basic forms in silhouette. The world seems to fall away from them - nothing exists in any sort of clarity but themselves and the ground they stand on. The photos bleed a desperate feeling of loneliness - of true isolation from everything around them. They seem either wholly unsure of themselves or defiantly embracing a mode of life at atypical angles from the rest of the society which shuns them and sweeps them into the cracks of existence to be politely erased from mind. But these photographs force you to confront the ignored - to realize exactly what it is we somehow have grown to fear - that wrath of mental disease which the uninflicted can never truly understand (something which terrifies us). We see the unfortunate victims of genetics as what they really are - people. Real, feeling, ultimately understandable people. And as uncomfortable as this process may be, it is completely necessary, and ultimately a beautiful thing.
August 25, 2017
I had read about Diane Arbus and wanted to see some of her photography, so I checked this book out of the library. This book was not published during her lifetime but from pictures from her estate. It contains pictures of the mentally disabled in the homes provided for them in 1969-1971. The pictures are stark, and for me, they were disturbing. This may be because I personally had an older mentally retarded sister in one of these homes, and it broke my mother's heart to put her there. I remember my sister as a happy person who seemed to enjoy her life there. I did not see the joy in these faces that I saw in my sister. Because of my emotional link, I am not an unbiased judge.
December 28, 2018
I've been going through about a dozen Diane Arbus books and I keep falling more and more in love with her images. This book is the only one that is a series of related images. It's wonderful, as they all are, but what I loved the most was the afterward. Written by Doon Arbus, it does an excellent job of identifying and describing why her pictures are so haunting and amazing. While most of the others have very dry and academic-y descriptions of her work and biographical information of the artist, I feel like this afterward really captures the heart of her work.
August 3, 2022
There is a lot of humanity in Diane Arbus's photographs. You can tell that she had a connection with her subjects, and with the people in these photographs especially. There is an exchange of strength between them, perhaps they are complicit in a secret.
April 25, 2023
"They are revelatory rather than didactic, but their very existence seems proof that nothing conjured by the imagination could be as awesome or exhilarating or magical or baffling as an encounter with reality. "
- Doon Arbus, Afterword
- Doon Arbus, Afterword
May 26, 2025
Serie de fotografías que mucho nos dicen pero poco sabemos. Es el ultimo trabajo de la fotógrafa que deja sin acabar y se suicida. Una obra increíble y profunda. El encuadre que nos expresa con su Mamiya destaca cada una de sus retratantes.
October 29, 2020
Beautiful photographs! Funnily enough, they also give me an uncomfortable feeling. Why though? I can't really put my finger on it.
May 26, 2024
As Doon Arbus believes about her mother's art, "...her photographs have no such modesty, take refuge in no such alibis. They state as calmly as only the deepest certainty can: This is how it is... they act as an assault on all polite, habitual blindness to what's really there. This can be disquieting, even shocking. Her photographs seem to catch us and hold is in that state between sleep and waking..."
& I guess I'd add: more
creative & compelling than instagram!! I've been going to the library & taking out large art books this year, and that has not been a bad 2024 move at all.
& I guess I'd add: more
creative & compelling than instagram!! I've been going to the library & taking out large art books this year, and that has not been a bad 2024 move at all.
September 6, 2016
The design for this book is very quiet which suits the collection well. Large reproductions of the photographs, no introduction to the collection, a very brief front cover blurb and no titles or dates to distract from the flow.
These images come out of Diane's work photographing residents at a care facility for the developmentally disabled between 1969-1971 and have a quietness that is different from much of her other work. These are less posed, have less of Arbus' hand in them, instead showing her subjects playing around, holding hands, dressed up in Halloween costumes, unselfconscious. As her daughter writes in the brief afterword "No one else had ever posed for her...with such abandon, such equanimity about their own sense of identity". While these photographs can be viewed as exploitative, I see them as part of Arbus' interest in showing us the people we are habitually blind to. She was obsessed with looking at and making others look at people who were supposed to be politely ignored, the neglected and denied. It's only the reminder of this exclusion that makes these portraits painful to look at.
These images come out of Diane's work photographing residents at a care facility for the developmentally disabled between 1969-1971 and have a quietness that is different from much of her other work. These are less posed, have less of Arbus' hand in them, instead showing her subjects playing around, holding hands, dressed up in Halloween costumes, unselfconscious. As her daughter writes in the brief afterword "No one else had ever posed for her...with such abandon, such equanimity about their own sense of identity". While these photographs can be viewed as exploitative, I see them as part of Arbus' interest in showing us the people we are habitually blind to. She was obsessed with looking at and making others look at people who were supposed to be politely ignored, the neglected and denied. It's only the reminder of this exclusion that makes these portraits painful to look at.
June 2, 2008
Unflinching, disturbing.
This book is the only one in which Arbus focuses on a single subject.
Shot over several years, the images of patients in several homes for the mentally retarded are compelling. However, I found the reality to be a little bit too "unflinching". Although Arbus photographs her subjects with compassion I still felt a twinge of exploitation.
I found the book hard to get through.
According to the notes, Arbus was thrilled with the body of work, however it remained unpublished for quite a while (the photos were taken from '69-'71).
Diane Arbus was indeed a tortured soul herself, and perhaps found a connection with these poor people who are so dis-connected from our society. As an artistic endevour the book is fantastic, too harsh for me though.
This book is the only one in which Arbus focuses on a single subject.
Shot over several years, the images of patients in several homes for the mentally retarded are compelling. However, I found the reality to be a little bit too "unflinching". Although Arbus photographs her subjects with compassion I still felt a twinge of exploitation.
I found the book hard to get through.
According to the notes, Arbus was thrilled with the body of work, however it remained unpublished for quite a while (the photos were taken from '69-'71).
Diane Arbus was indeed a tortured soul herself, and perhaps found a connection with these poor people who are so dis-connected from our society. As an artistic endevour the book is fantastic, too harsh for me though.
February 13, 2015
I've never truly admire or read a photography book except those in regards to famous celebrities. This collection of photographs were capture in 1969-1971 and deals with Mentally Handicap individuals ranging from kids to the elderly.
I found it really sad not because of them neon handicap, but because they were ashamed of who they are disguising themselves in mask or costume to escape the reality that surrounds them.
Even thought I wasn't captivated as I wished to have been, I am glad that I experienced the world through Diane Arbus lenses.
Thank you Diane Keaton & Oprah for this recommendation!
I found it really sad not because of them neon handicap, but because they were ashamed of who they are disguising themselves in mask or costume to escape the reality that surrounds them.
Even thought I wasn't captivated as I wished to have been, I am glad that I experienced the world through Diane Arbus lenses.
Thank you Diane Keaton & Oprah for this recommendation!
October 4, 2015
Diane Arbus: Untitled by Diane Arbus (Aperture 2005) (770.92). “Arbus' remarkable romanticism” shows itself in all of the portraits included in this volume. Between 1969 and 1971, Arbus spent much of her time photographing the mentally ill. The resulting photos are acclaimed as some of her best work. My rating: 7.5/10, finished 2007.
November 28, 2011
"A photograph has to be of something and what it's of is always more remarkable than the photograph. And more complicated." -- Diane Arbus
June 17, 2024
Half of the pages are blank. What a waste of paper! Automatic fail.
April 11, 2017
This is my favourite Arbus collection, but let's be honest here: the images that are striking are incredibly powerful, the rest are pretty basic, aim-the-flash flat at the subject in the same or similar environment, and her composition skills aren't the best, are they? Oh well.
April 24, 2017
Absolutely amazing!
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews