Books by Doon Arbus

The Sixties

by Doon Arbus

The photographer Richard Avedon and the writer Doon Arbus began collaborating on this book thirty years ago. The photographs and interviews they did then remain faithful to what was, like the contents of a time capsule.

Meeting somebody and balling them means something, but it doesn't mean near as much as it used to. --Janis Joplin, September 1969

In a society where there is institutionalized oppression, the thing is to catch government and business in the grass--actually humping. --Florynce Kennedy, August 1969

I was so afraid of being bad and being caught at it. --Dr. Benjamin Spock, September 1969

The connection between all the rhetoric and all the poetry, between the words of a Black Panther and those of a rock star or a pacifist, between the scars of a pop artist and those of a napalm victim, have haunted and informed the structuring of this book, with its own peculiar version of a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph: Fortieth-Anniversary Edition

by Doon Arbus, Marvin Israel

When Diane Arbus died in 1971 at the age of 48, she was already a significant influence—even something of a legend—for serious photographers, although only a relatively small number of her most important pictures were widely known at the time. The publication of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph in 1972—along with the posthumous retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art—offered the general public its first encounter with the breadth and power of her achievements. The response was unprecedented. The monograph, composed of 80 photographs, was edited and designed by the painter Marvin Israel, Diane Arbus' friend and colleague, and by her daughter Doon Arbus. Their goal in producing the book was to remain as faithful as possible to the standards by which Arbus judged her own work and to the ways in which she hoped it would be seen. Universally acknowledged as a photobook classic, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph is a timeless masterpiece with editions in five languages, and remains the foundation of her international reputation. A quarter of a century has done nothing to diminish the riveting impact of these pictures or the controversy they inspire. Arbus' photographs penetrate the psyche with all the force of a personal encounter and, in doing so, transform the way we see the world and the people in it.

Diane Arbus: Untitled

by Doon Arbus, Diane Arbus

Product Description

Untitled is the third volume of Diane Arbus’s work and the only one devoted exclusively to a single project. The photographs were taken at residences for the mentally retarded between 1969 and 1971, in the last years of Arbus’s life. Although she considered doing a book on the subject, the vast majority of these pictures remained unpublished prior to this volume. These photographs achieve a lyricism, an emotional purity that sets them apart from all her other accomplishments. “Finally what I’ve been searching for,” she wrote at the time. The product of her consistently unflinching regard for reality as she found it, the images in this book have less in common with the documentary than with the mythic. Untitled may well be Arbus’s most transcendent, most romantic vision. It is a celebration of the singularity and connectedness of each and every one of us. For Diane Arbus, this is what making pictures was all about.

About the Author

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) revolutionized the terms of the art she practiced. Five volumes of her work have been published posthumously and have remained continuously in print: Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph (1972), Diane Arbus: Magazine Work (1984), Untitled: Diane Arbus (1995), Diane Arbus: A Chronology (2011), and Diane Arbus Revelations (Random House, 2003).

Diane Arbus Revelations

by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Doon Arbus, Diane Arbus, Sarah H. Meister, Sandra S. Phillips

To ensure the ongoing availability of Diane Arbus Revelations, Aperture is proud to release this vitally important volume on the fiftieth anniversary of the posthumous 1972 Arbus retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and the simultaneous publication of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph.

Revelations explores the origins, scope, and aspirations of Arbus's wholly original voice. Arbus’s frank treatment of her subjects and her faith in the intrinsic power of the medium have produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Presenting many of her lesser-known or previously unpublished photographs in the context of the iconic images reveals a subtle yet persistent view of the world.

The book reproduces two hundred full-page duotones of Diane Arbus photographs spanning her entire career. It also includes a new contribution by Sarah Meister, executive director of Aperture, alongside essays by Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography, emeritus, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and a discussion of Arbus’s printing techniques by Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized to print her photographs since her death. An extensive chronology by Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show, and Doon Arbus, the artist’s eldest daughter, is illustrated by more than three hundred additional images and composed primarily of excerpts from the artist’s letters, notebooks, and other writings, amounting to a kind of autobiography. An afterword by Doon Arbus precedes biographical entries on the photographer’s friends and colleagues, compiled by Jeff L. Rosenheim, curator in charge of the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. These texts help illuminate the meaning of Diane Arbus’s controversial and astonishing vision.

Diane Arbus

by Doon Arbus, Diane Arbus

When Diane Arbus died in 1971 at the age of 48, she was already a significant influence--even something of a legend--for serious photographers, although only a relatively small number of her most important pictures were widely known at the time.

The publication of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph in 1972--along with the posthumous retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art--offered the general public its first encounter with the breadth and power of her achievements. The response was unprecedented. The monograph, composed of 80 photographs, was edited and designed by the painter Marvin Israel, Diane Arbus' friend and colleague, and by her daughter Doon Arbus. Their goal in producing the book was to remain as faithful as possible to the standards by which Arbus judged her own work and to the ways in which she hoped it would be seen.

Universally acknowledged as a photobook classic, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph is a timeless masterpiece with editions in five languages, and remains the foundation of her international reputation. A quarter of a century has done nothing to diminish the riveting impact of these pictures or the controversy they inspire. Arbus' photographs penetrate the psyche with all the force of a personal encounter and, in doing so, transform the way we see the world and the people in it.