Saturday 10 September 2011

"But is laughter a synonym for joy?"

"There is a commonplace idea, accepted by nearly everyone, that feelings become blunted by experience. Nothing can be more untrue." (II.7.iii) [L'Homme Qui Rit (The Man Who Laughs, 1869) by Victor Hugo]

"But is laughter a synonym for joy?" (II.2.i) [L'Homme Qui Rit (The Man Who Laughs, 1869) by Victor Hugo]

The Man Who Laughs, 1869, by Victor Hugo

I watched  Fur movie, starring Nicole Kidman as photographer Diane Arbus.
Diane Arbus was one of the most important and innovative photographers of the 1960s. Diane had committed suicide in 1971, at the age of 48. The following year there was a large retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art, where her startling portraits of dwarfs, transvestites, freaks, and nudists redefined people's notions of normal and abnormal.
Her art show toured all over the world to acclaim and controversy. Diane began acquiring an international reputation, albeit posthumously. At the same time, her suicide and the mystery surrounding it were turning her into a legend; she was being compared to Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe.

She had separated from husband Allan and left fashion, and she begun photographing people "without their masks"‑strangers, fricks... discovered on foggy afternoons at Coney Island, or the bizarre habitants of Hubert's Dime Museum and Flea Circus, off Times Square. She was also shooting at drag‑queen contests and nudist colonies. It was a time of enormous creativity for her, and she was flush with assignments from Esquire and New York.


Diane was  connected to her subjects by a magnetic bond; at as the source of her formidable power.

http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/vanity%20fair/925e-000-027.html

Diane Arbus by Ileana Faur

http://convozine.com/6042-ileana-faur/c/10221

By ARTHUR LUBOW
"New York Times"


What I think about art of Diana Arbus? She reminds me Josiana from Victor Hugo The Man Who Laugh.
She (Diana Arbus) was born with a gold spoon in her mouth and it is quite cynic to enjoying watching very poor and ugly people in my opinion.
Million talented photographers have been before her and a million after her... - but her art will always be popular and famous because  "big money make big glory"
"An artistically gifted child, Diane grew up knowing wealth, nannies, foreign travel and the deference of strangers, which she hated. "I remember the special agony of walking down that center aisle, feeling like the princess of Russek's: simultaneously privileged and doomed," she wrote to her friend and later lover, the artist Marvin Israel, in 1960. The "family fortune always seemed to me humiliating..." she observed, reflecting the ease with which one can hate being rich never having been poor"  Diane Arbus: Revealed And Rediscovered
By Frank Van Riper
Special to Camera Works


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030925.htm 




Award-winning video

Svefn-G-Englar

from Iceland, conceived by and supervised by the musical group, Sigur Ros and the filmmaker, Agust Jacobsson, features the Perlan special-needs theatre group acting out a simple but beautiful play about the elements really reminds me of Diane Arbus' work, for some reason.







Long after Diane Arbus photographed them, twins Cathleen Mulcahy, left, and Colleen Yorke are still recognized by strangers. (Helayne Seidman - For The Washington Post) 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051102052_3.html