Under The Bridge Episode 13: The Big Bang of Diane Arbus' Constellation

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no matter how myopic it may be - here’s mine!

This is a podcast about Diane Arbus “Constellation” show at Park Avenue Armory, which closed August 17th. This show has been fairly controversial, because of the way the work is presented (for example, read this post by photographer Dita Livotsky or this particularly soggy review of the show (Arbus’ work is no longer relevant because “social media shows me world is bad place so don’t need 60 year old picture” and “I confused because mirror and pictures no context so hard to critic”)

Spoiler alert: I loved the show. I’ve seen hundreds of photography exhibits and they’ve mostly been done the same way: perfectly hung right on the sight line, usually with little cards giving context for each image, pictures grouped together by subject matter or project or time period. It’s always very linear.

Constellation, however, does none of that. Some pictures are on the walls, but the majority are hung on lattices. Photographs are down near your ankles, some require you to get on your tiptoe to see them. They are not organized in any discernible or traditional manner - there is no beginning or end of the exhibition, so wherever you start viewing seems arbitrary. The sense of spacial disorientation is compounded by a mirror that acts as the rear wall of the exhibition, which makes the show seem almost endless. It’s as though there was a “big bang” beneath a pile of Arbus’ work, and Constellation freezes a moment in time as it expands through the universe.

And this is wonderful.

Constellation was an experience - an entirely non-traditional one - which I suspect the artist would have loved. Anyway, give a listen and if you have thoughts, please share them.

(Note: while at the show, I bumped into the noted photographer Dona Ann McAdams and we talked about our Leica M’s, Kodak Tri-X, and of course our impressions of Constellation. We had a wonderful chat. I was on the steps of the Armory when she came out, and she was curious about my digital recorder, which had a dead cat windscreen on it. She thought the dead cat (which looks like what it is named) was hilarious and wanted to photograph me with it; of course I agreed and kept the recorder rolling. I was wearing a bright white t-shirt and standing against kind of a dark background, so the meter in her M was jumping all over the place, over then underexposed. The M has this kind of kooky circular meter thing, no spot metering option, so it can be tricky to get a correct reading in high contrast, wider shots. So I completely embarrassed myself and mansplained to a brilliant photographer who has been shown at MOMA, The Whitney and ICP how an M light meter works. I swear it was with the best of intentions! And we got it figured out. I still haven’t seen the picture though…..)

Best,

Jim

(and by the way, Happy World Photography Day!)

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