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DIANE ARBUS (1923-1971)/NEIL SELKIRK (1947- )
Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C.
Silver print, approximately 14
1
/
4
inches (36.2 cm.) square, with the A Diane Arbus Photograph hand stamp
with Doon Arbus’ signature, title, date, and the edition notation 45/75,
in ink, as well as the Copyright (with the date 1967) and All Rights
Reserved hand stamps, all on verso. 1963; printed later
[20,000/30,000]
From the Zelda Cheatle Gallery, London, circa 1988; to the Collection
of Steve Pyke.
Diane Arbus was among the boldest, most innovative and uncompromising
artists to explore photography as a form of creative expression. Her
iconography of powerful portraits, which quickly developed during the
1960s, captured the changing zeitgeist of the American social landscape.
The year this picture was made (1963), Arbus applied for a Guggenheim
Fellowship, and asked Lisette Model to provide a letter of recommendation.
Model’s letter read, in part:“Photographers can be good, bad, excellent, first
rate, or tops, but there are hardly any artists among them. Here is an
exception.”Later that year,Arbus was awarded a fellowship to pursue a project
relating to “photographic studies of American rites, manners and customs.”
Diane Arbus
(Aperture, 1972), unpaginated.
Diane Arbus, Revelations,
p. 102.