Culture critic Carolina Miranda weighs in on a retrospective of Diane Arbus’ photography at Zwirner gallery, and a Wende Museum exhibition about mass surveillance in former East Germany during the Cold War.
“Cataclysm”
When photography was not considered fine art, Diane Arbus shot black-and-white portraits of everyday people, including women at a laundromat, a boy crossing a street, and a close-up of a newborn baby. New York’s Museum of Modern Art then hosted a retrospective in 1972 that featured more than 100 of those portraits, stirring heated debate in the art world. Critics blasted Arbus’ work as soulless, while others compared it to painting and poetry. Curious visitors lined up around the block to see the show that changed how we view photography.
David Zwirner gallery in Hollywood has recreated that exhibition, now called “.cataclysm. The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited.” It’s on view through June 21.
Miranda says that in the 1950s-60s, much of the fine art world approached photography almost as a trade, and Arbus’ show demonstrated that people needed a vision to create photographs that sing, and photography was equally about the camera gear and the person looking through the viewfinder.
Diane Arbus, “A castle in Disneyland, Cal. 1962.” © The Estate of Diane Arbus.
A photo that stands out to Miranda: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland, shot a night, looking moody and almost haunted. Arbus has a slightly gothic aesthetic with all of her work, and here, the “happiest place on earth” gets completely transformed.
Diane Arbus, “Tattooed man at a carnival, MD. 1970.” © The Estate of Diane Arbus.
Arbus also shot portraits of people at the margins, including circus performers, transgender cabaret singers, and institutionalized patients. She respects her subjects and is unafraid to look, Miranda says.
“These were all people that in 1950s and 60s, people would have pejoratively derided as freaks. … But what I think Arbus really brought is this very honest gaze that she is photographing the circus performer or the transgender performer with the same care and the same eye that she brings to that photo of Anderson Cooper, or that she brings to a couple sitting on a park bench,” Miranda explains.
“Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency”
This exhibition looks at mass surveillance in former East Germany during the Cold War — before digital technology. Visitors can see historic artifacts, documents, and art. This is on view at Culver City’s Wende Museum through Oct. 19.
While today people keep watch via cameras and facial recognition tech, back then, a tool was a guard at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, for example, Miranda points out.
She’s particularly fascinated by Eastern European manuals that taught guards and police how to properly identify individuals. “This is done by literally creating pages of drawings of noses so that people know different types of noses or different eyes, eyes, or lips. And it's this very strange series of drawings of these disembodied body parts to teach guards how to look for distinctive features in people's faces.”
The East German secret police, known as Stasi, literally followed people through the streets if they believed they were involved in dangerous activities, Miranda adds. The Stasi even stole people’s underwear and kept them inside jars — to give to a scent hound dog if someone escaped or disappeared and needed to be chased down.
The exhibition also showcases works by East Germany’s Verena Kyselka, who was followed by Stasi and later created art from her surveillance file when it went public.
“The police might say, ‘Oh, she's up to all kinds of decadent activity.’ And then she'll counter it by adding her own text that basically says, ‘She was gathering with her friends to stage an improvised fashion show.’ And so all of these things that the Stasi make sound super sinister, when she reinterprets them in these collage works, you realize it's just an artist going on about her daily life.”