Diane Arbus
American, 1923–1971
Two Ladies at the Automat (New York City)
INV-6323
Diane Arbus
American, 1923–19711966, printed 1977
Two Ladies at the Automat (New York City)
Diane Arbus American, 1923–1971 →photographygelatin silver (developing-out-paper) pr
Date
1966, printed 1977
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image: 37.5 × 37.5 cm (14 13/16 × 14 13/16 in.); Paper: 50.5 × 40.5 cm (19 15/16 × 16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Theodore Collyer
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.
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