DIANE ARBUS: GUGGENHEIM GRANTS, 1963-1967

October 26 – December 29, 2012

Photography dealer Kathy McCarver Root and her gallery, KMR Arts, proudly announce the opening of its latest show of fine art photography, “Diane Arbus: Guggenheim Grants, 1963-1967.” The exhibition opens October 26 and will continue through December 29, 2012. “Diane Arbus: Guggenheim Grants, 1963-1967” will be comprised of vintage prints by the influential photographer, Diane Arbus.

Diane Arbus (1923-1971) remains an enigma to many: her portraits of people on the fringe – Arbus herself sometimes referred to her subjects as freaks - are intense, provocative, beautiful, resonant, intimate, and unforgettable. Arbus’s powerful photographs have far reaching influence into modern cultural consciousness: the worlds of film, music, literature, photography and painting have all been touched by the strength of Diane Arbus’s images.

The exhibit at KMR Arts will focus on images made by Arbus from 1963- 1967. These years were a crucial turning point within Diane Arbus’s body of work as she applied for and was awarded two Guggenheim grants. Arbus received these grants at a time when her style was maturing and they provided Arbus complete artistic and financial freedom to explore her interest in Rites, Manners, Customs. Arbus eloquently wrote in her Guggenheim project description for “Rites, Manners, Customs”:

...the stuff of dreams, ritual, aristocracy, imposters, fame, anonymity, figments, real visions, American dreams, daily dreams, walking dreams, American hallucinations, real mirage…

This period also marked a turning point in terms of the technical choices Arbus was making: in 1962, she began using the larger 2 ¼ format rather than the 35mm format and in 1965, she began printing the images to include the dark black borders around the negative. These choices contributed to the unavoidable truthfulness in her images: direct, dignified, and disciplined.

This exhibition is a remarkable grouping of vintage prints assembled by a private collector. It is arguably the best collection of Diane Arbus’s work in private hands. All vintage prints, a number of these actual prints are exhibition prints which were in the groundbreaking New Documents show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967. The MOMA show was comprised of photographs by Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus.

“It is a profound honor to present this superb group of photographs by one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. Diane Arbus was a true revolutionary whose intelligence and intrepid nature revealed a facet of humanity rarely seen before. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to exhibit photographs at this level. These prints are remarkable on a number of levels: provenance, quality, and connoisseurship. I hope that many people make the effort to see the exhibition in order to witness the strangely wonderful work of this powerful artist. ”, says McCarver Root of the exhibition.