Diane Arbus: Untitled

The images from Untitled were made at residences for people with developmental disabilities, places Arbus repeatedly returned to for picnics and dances, and at Halloween between 1969 and 1971, the last years of her life. “These photographs… can’t be confined by critical categorization, because they are purely ecstatic; they are the pictures Arbus had been waiting all her life to take,” wrote Hilton Als. “It’s as if the most remarkable images she produced in the early sixties … were faint talismans leading Arbus to this final study, in which her justly renowned control cannot compete with the unconscious power of her subjects.”

Black-and-white photograph of five figures wearing masks with an open field in the background and cloudy sky
Black-and-white photograph of a figure wearing a mask with a field in the background
Black-and-white photograph of two figures wearing bathing suits standing in a field with a line of trees in the background
Black-and-white photograph of a masked figure in a wheelchair with a building and tree in the background
Black-and-white photograph of three masked figures in coats with trees in the background
Black-and-white photograph of two women wearing hats with a building in the background
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Related Portfolios

Diane Arbus: in the beginning
Black-and-white photograph of a woman with dark hair wearing a pearl necklace and broach

Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph
Black-and-white photograph of a tanned man sitting with his head resting on his hand

Diane Arbus: Magazine Work
Black-and-white square photograph of two figures in embrace on an empty stage, the their left is a single floor lamp illuminating the scene to their right is a poster depicting a couple kissing

Diane Arbus: Revelations