A Brief History of Blue

Items

• A woman in a bird mask, N.Y.C., 1967
• Two ladies walking in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1963
• Woman with eyeliner, NYC, 1967/2003
• Seated man in a bra and stockings, N.Y.C., 1967
• Woman at a Counter Smoking, N.Y.C., 1962
• Girl in a coat lying on her bed, N.Y.C.
• Two Ladies at the Automat (New York City)
  Just two years before she received her first camera, Diane Arbus wrote: “There are and have been and will be an infinite number of things on Earth. Individuals all different, all wanting different things, all knowing different things, all loving different things, all looking different… . That is what I love: the differentness.” Arbus’s appreciation for the unusual, eccentric, and extraordinary led her to photograph a range of subjects over the thirty years of her career—transvestites, giants, art philanthropists, nudists, and, as here, similarly dressed and made-up women. These ladies, with their cigarettes poised in one hand and lighters clutched in the other, occupy a booth in a New York City automat. (Now nearly obsolete and a nostalgic choice even in the 1960s, automats offered simple fare, sold from coin-operated vending machines, that was eaten at surrounding booths and counters.) Like many of Arbus’s subjects, these women were photographed in a straightforward manner. The eerily matched ladies face the camera head-on, posed in front of an unadorned marble wall and staring directly at the viewer. The candor with which Arbus presented these women is typical of the pioneering, powerful first-person directness that exists throughout her photography.
• Hudson River Waterfront, New York City
  New York City waterfront with steamboats on the Hudson River in the foreground
• Boy Jumping into Hudson River, NYC
  Boy jumping off industrial building into the Hudson River while onlookers watch
• View of Midtown, Looking Toward the Hudson River
  View of Midtown, Manhattan with the Hudson River in the middle ground
• Baptising Scene, Near the White Fort, Hudson River, New York
  Baptism scene near the White Fort on the Hudson River