Diane Arbus

In the latest helping from Anthony d’Offay’s Artist Rooms collection the Dean Gallery offers a brimming retrospective of some 70 prints from renowned photographer Diane Arbus. Fitting comfortably in the canon of artistically brilliant yet suicidal female artists such as Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Francesca Woodman, Arbus not only found success during her shortened life but also gained significant posthumous fame through her "celebration of things as they are". This extensive collection on show embraces an undeniable honesty that dissolves the all-too glossy sheen of 1960s America and candidly exposes it as a contemporary freakshow of oddity and abnormality.

On moving through the gallery’s low-lit rooms the viewer is struck by the sheer variety of subject matter within the various works. The photographs reflect Arbus’s desire "to photograph everybody", from the lives of the rich and famous to those living on the shrouded margins of society. As such we move from images such as the waxwork-like figures of ‘Four people at a gallery opening’, statically fixed within the frame by Arbus’s hard flash, to the uncomfortable intimacy of ‘Naked Man Being A Woman’. Those who are often singled out for being different—giants, midgets, transvestites, freaks and geeks—are here brought together and confronted alongside ostensibly 'normal' individuals. Arbus does not wish to point and stare but instead to acknowledge the natural heterogeneity of human experience beneath the artificial façade of her society.

Particularly strong is a room devoted to the ‘Untitled’ series where Arbus gained access to a state hospital and objectively depicted patients in Halloween attire. Dressed in the clichéd comic scariness of the Halloween mask, images such as ‘Masked Woman in a Wheelchair’ take the notion of "freak" to a new and terrifying level, cleverly playing the disturbed reaction of the viewer against the reality of the disturbed mind behind the mask.

"Freaks were born with their trauma," wrote Arbus. "They’ve already passed their test in life." This statement certainly rings true here, and her evident preoccupation with the "freaks" of society proves an ironic comparison with the images of those who view themselves far removed from this label, as Arbus places all of her subjects on the same level. The exhibit successfully mirrors this theme through the identically sized and ordered arrangement of the images; there is no ‘best’ picture, but instead a diverse and intriguing array of photographs that paint a picture of a previously quashed reality.