The Dream Of A Shipwreck

Partly because of the limited time spent on the train, I have not finished Diane Arbus’ biography yet. Ever since I opened it, I can’t get it out of my mind though. This book doesn’t give itself easily: it orders me to read slowly. The content is rich, and I need time to digest the diversity of ideas and imagery. Only then can I move on, when I have thought the matter through. Trying as that may sound; it is in fact well worth the effort.

Diane Arbus was a famous American photographer (1923-1971), best known for her pictures of eccentric people and so-called freaks. Dwarfs, giants, transvestites, hermaphrodites, Arbus picked them out, and portrayed the circus people at home, in their own rooms and surrounded by their belongings. Giving them almost mythological value in her pictures, she made it a quest to show the lives of those who inhabit the sub world, the gutter of the world of human beings.

Feeling cut-off from life ever since she was a little girl, always more the observer, Diane Arbus stepped forward to show the truth she saw. Her photographs are multi-layered and tell a story. Never shocking, just below the surface, and out of reach from every-day reality, she creates a world where you walk around with a constant feeling of discomfort. She shows us her own nightmares and the depths of her growing despair. Arbus finally ends her life, age 49.

There are no pictures in this book, and this is a good choice: they would only distract from the frail person behind the camera. And it is such a pleasure to focus on her: Arbus’ remarks are of a striking clarity, and tell of a person with a heightened ability to observe. She is a very sensitive woman, who ventures out into this strange corner of the world. Taking time to get to know her models and set up some sort of relationship with them, she only took out her camera when she had accomplished this. Every connection to another human being touched her, and this openness to other people made her vulnerable to their suffering.

This is the biography of a fascinating and memorable woman. Roegiers, a Belgian journalist, shows her as a complete woman, with all those different facets combined: being complex and clear, strong and vulnerable, Diane Arbus strikes me as a woman who wasn’t afraid to step into the deepest black.