Thursday, July 31, 2008

Arbus Shots We Never Get To See


After seeing a few photographs by Diane Arbus that I had never really seen before last week at Fraenkel Gallery in SF, I began thinking about this photograph above "Two Girls in Identical Raincoats, Central Park, N.Y.C, 1969". This image was in the first printing of the Diane Arbus monograph but removed from subsequent printings. When I was in college the professor, Marc Hessle, had a copy of the early book he carried around with him constantly. I remember looking at his copy, noticing the image above, loving it, and never seeing it again or in other copies of the book. He explained that the family of the girls didn't like the inclusion of the photograph and asked that it be removed. Doing a search online for information about this shot and the exclusion, I couldn't find anything...but fortunately found the shot in a classic Google moment.
Does anyone know the story behind the removal of this image? For everyone else, please enjoy.

1 comment:

Christopher Paquette said...

I don't know the story behind this photo, and I've never seen it before, but there is an interesting post about Arbus photographs on Jim Danziger's blog...

twins, etc