Fraenkel Gallery, in collaboration with David Zwirner, is pleased to present A box of ten photographs, 1970, a set of 10 gelatin silver photographs selected and printed by Diane Arbus, housed in a Plexiglas box designed by Marvin Israel. A box of ten photographs comprises several of Diane Arbus’s most iconic images and is the only portfolio the artist ever made.
This edition, one of only eight she printed herself, has remained with her two daughters for over five decades, and includes the original title page and interleaving sheets with handwritten inscriptions for each work. The portfolio was shown in the American pavilion at the 1972 Venice Biennale, the first time photographs had ever been included there. In the words of Philip Leider, founding editor of Artforum, who published six portfolio images in 1971 in the magazine, where no photographs had appeared before, “It seemed to me that any definition of art that did not include such a body of work was fatally flawed.” These events marked the beginning of photography’s acceptance as a profound visual art.
