photo mag

g r e a t w o m e n p h o t o g r a p h e r s
1

2

g r e a t w o m e n p h o t o g r a p h e r s
d e s i g n e d b y
h a n n a k i m

CONTENTS
04
DOROTHEA LANGE
22
VIVIAN MAIER

44
MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE
128
DIANE ARBUS
154
IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM

DOROTHEA
LANGE
8
(MAY 26, 1895 – OCTOBER 11, 1965)
Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to Heinrich
Nutzhorn and Johanna Lange. She was an American documentary
photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era
work for the Farm Security Administration where Lange photographed
the unemployed men who wandered the streets of San Francisco and
migrant workers. Her portrait photography of displaced farmers during
the Great Depression greatly influenced later documentary photography.
Dorothea Lange met Paul Taylor, a university professor and labor
Economist. In 1935, they both left their spouses to be with each other.
During the next five years, they traveled together and documented the
rural hardships they encountered for the Farm Security Administration.
Taylor would write poems while Lange photographed who they met,
including the most well known portrait, “Migrant Mother.”

9

10
THE GREAT DEPRESSION 1930
Men waiting in line for an opportunity at a job during the depression.

11

12

13
WHITE ANGEL BREADLINE 1933
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
The failure of the American dream is vividly captured in “White Angel Breadline.” Lange took this famous photo in 1933
of a group of hungry men who were gathered outside a soup kitchen on the Embarcadero, near Filbert Street. The feeding
station for the Depression’s poor was created by a widow named Lois Jordan, who called herself White Angel.
Most of the men in the picture have their backs to the camera except for one man with a battered hat and an old trench
coat. Staring bleakly ahead, oblivious of the camera, he is seen cradling a tin cup of soup and folds his hands over a wooden
rail as if in prayer.

14
MIGRANT MOTHER 1936
NIPOMO, CALIFORNIA

15
“WE JUST EXISTED,
WE SURVIVED.
LET’S PUT IT THAT WAY.”
Florence Owens Thompson was born Florence Leona Christie, a
Cherokee, in a teepee in Indian Territory, Oklahoma in 1903. At age
17, she got married and moved to California for farm and millwork.
Thompson became pregnant at 28 with her sixth child and around this
time, her husband died of tuberculosis. From then on, she all kinds of
worked odd jobs to keep her children fed. During cotton harvests, she
would put her babies in bags and carry them along with her as she
worked down the rows, earning 50 cents per 100 pounds picked.
Thompson generally picked around 450,500 pounds a day. In 1963,
while driving from LA to Watsonville, her car broke down and managed
to get it towed into the Nipomo pea-pickers camp. Thompson had the
car repaired and was just about to leave when Dorothea Lange showed
up. She wasn’t eager to have her family photographed and exhibited
as specimens of poverty, but there were people starving in that camp.
Lange had convinced her that the image would educate the public
about the plight of hardworking poor people like herself.
“Migrant Mother” gently and beautifully captured the hardships and
pain of what so many other Americans were experiencing. This iconic
photo almost didn’t happen. When Dorothea Lange drove past the
“Pea-Pickers Camp” sign in Nipomo, north of Los Angeles, she kept
going for 20 miles. For the whole 20 miles, there was something
nagging her, finally deciding to turn around. Once the photographer
spotted Frances Owens Thompson, she knew she was in the right place.
Lange, who believed that one could understand others through close
study, tightly framed the children and the mother, whose eyes, worn
from worry and resignation, look past the camera. She took six photos
with her 4x5 Graflex camera and later wrote, “I knew I had recorded
the essence of my assignment.” After, Lange informed the authorities
of the plight of those at the encampment, and they sent 20,000
pounds of food. Of the 160,000 images taken by Lange and other
photographers for the Resettlement Administration, “Migrant Mother”
has become the most iconic picture of the Depression. Lange gave a
face to a suffering nation.

MARCH 1937
18 year old mother from Olklahoma,
now a California migrant.
16

17
1935
Woman seated with her children at
the entrace of a squatters shelter

18

19

NOVEMBER 1936
KERN MIGRANT CAMP, CALIFORNIA
While the mothers are working in the fields, the
preschool children of migrant families are cared
for in the nursery school under trained teachers.
20

MARCH 1937
CALIFORNIA, NEAR GUADALUPE
Japanese mother and daughter,
agricultural workers.
21
NOVEMBER 1936
CALIFORNIA, NEAR FRESNO
Oklahoma mother of 5 children,
now picking cotton.

NOVEMBER 1940
NEAR COOLIDGE, ARIZONA
Migratory cotton picker with his cotton sack
slung over his shoulder rests at the scales before
returning to work in the field.
22

23

1932
TEXAS
The wife of a migratory laborer with three
children during the Depression.
24

25
1938
SHAFTER, CALIFORNIA
During the cotton strike, the father, a striking picker, has left his wife and
child in the car while he applies to the farm security administration for an
emergancy food grant.

VIVIAN
MAIER
26

27
(FEBRUARY 1, 1926 – APRIL 21, 2009)
Vivian Maier was born in New York City in 1926 and moved to the North Shore
area in Chicago in 1956. During this time, she worked as a nanny and carer for
the next forty years. For the first seventeen years in Chicago, Maier worked for
two families. She was determined to show them the world outside of their affluent
suburb. The families who employed her described her as a very private person who
spent her days off walking the streets of Chicago and taking photographs, usually
with a Rolleiflex camera. She has taken more than 150,000 photographs which
were unknown and unpublished during her lifetime and many negatives were never
printed. Children of the nanny later described her, “She was a socialist, a feminist,
a movie critic, and a tell it like it is type of person. She learned English by going to
the theaters, which she loved… She was constantly taking pictures, which she didn’t
show anyone.” From 1959-1960, Vivian Maier took a trip around the world on her
own, photographing places like Los Angeles, Manila, Bangkok, Shanghai, Beijing,
India, Egypt, and Italy. She kept her belongings at her employers where one held
200 boxes of materials. Mostly photographs or negatives.
Vivian Maier looked after the Gensburg brothers when they were children. As she
became poorer in old age, they tried to her her. She was about to be evicted from
a cheap apartment in the suburb of Cicero when the Gensburg brothers arranged
for her to live in a better apartment on Sheridan Road in the Rogers Park area of
Chicago. In November 2008, Maier fell on ice and hit her head. She was taken to
the hospital but failed to recover and was transported to a nursing home in Chicago
suburbs where she later died on April 21, 2009.

28

29
In 2007, Maier failed to keep up with payments on a storage space she rented in Chicago’s
North Side. Because of this, negatives, prints, audio recordings, and 8mm film were auctioned
off. Three photo collectors, John Maloof, Ron Slattery, and Randy Prow, bought parts of her work.
Vivian Maier’s photographs were first published on the internet in July 2008 by Ron Slattery
and received little response. John Maloof bought the largest part of Maier’s work which was about
30,000 negatives, later burying more of Maier’s photographs from another buyer at the same
auction. In October 2009, John Maloof was working on a book about the history of the Chicago
neighborhood of Portage Park. He liked his blog to a selection of Maier’s photographs on Flickr
which went viral. Thousands of people expressed interest and attracted critical acclaim. Since
then, the photographs have been exhibited around the world, receiving international attention
in mainstream media.

30
1949
FRANCE
Vivian Maier began toying with her first photos. Her camera was a modest Kodak Brownie box camera, an amateur camera with only one
shutter speed, no focus control, and no aperture dial. The viewer screen is tiny, and for the controlled landscape or portrait artist, it would
arguably impose a wedge in between Vivian and her intentions due to its inaccuracy. Her intentions were at the mercy of this feeble machine.
In 1952, Vivian purchases a Rolleiflex camera to fulfill her fixation.

31
1956
In 1956, when Maier moved to Chicago, she enjoyed the luxury of a darkroom as well as a private bathroom. This allowed her to process her
prints and develop her own rolls of B&W film. As the children entered adulthood, the end of Maier’s employment from that first Chicago
family in the early seventies forced her to abandon developing her own film. As she would move from family to family, her rolls of undeveloped,
unprinted work began to collect.

32

33

34
1950
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

1953
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
EAST 78TH STREET & 3RD AVE.
CHRISTMAS EVE
35

MAY 5, 1955
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
36

37

MARCH 1954
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
MARCH 1954
NEW YORK, NEW YORK

39

40
OCTOBER 8, 1954
NEW YORK, NEW YORK

41
1954
NEW YORK, NEW YORK

42

JUNE 27, 1959
ASIA
43

JUNE 5, 1959
THAILAND
44

JUNE 27, 1959
ASIA
45
1959
SAIGON, VIETNAM

46

MARGARET
BOURKE-WHITE
47
(JUNE 14,1904 – AUGUST 27,1971)
Margaret Bourke-White was born in Bronx, New York in 1904 and attended
Clarence H. White School of Photography in 1921-1922. She graduated from
Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1927. Bourke-White left
behind a photographic study of the rural campus for the school’s newspaper
which included photos of her dormitory at Risely Hall. She moved to Cleveland,
Ohio where she started a commercial photography studio and began concentrating
on Architectural and industrial photography. Her success was due to her skills
with both people and her technique. Her work caught the attention of Henry
Luce who hired her in 1929 and sent her to the Soviet Union the next year. She
was the first foreign photographer to take photos of the Soviet Industry. She
photographed the Dust Bowl for Fortune in 1934 and in the fall of 1936, Henry
Luce offered Bourke-White a job as a staff photographer for his newly conceived
Life magazine. She was one of the first four photographers hired and her photograph
of Fort Peck Dam was reproduced on the first cover.
Throughout World War II, Margaret Bourke-White produced a number of photo
essays on the turmoil in Europe. She was the only Western photographer to witness
the German invasion of Moscow in 1941, she was the first woman to accompany Air
Corps crew on bombing missions in 1942, and she traveled with Patton’s army through
Germany in 1945 as it liberated several concentration camps. During the next twelve
years, she photographed major international events and stories, including Gandhi’s fight
for Indian independence, the unrest in South Africa, and the Korean War. Bourke-White
contracted Parkinson’s disease in 1953 and made her last photo essay for Life in 1957.

48
Margaret Bourke-White’s photojournalism demonstrated her
ability to communicate the intensity of major world events while
respecting formal relationships and aesthetic considerations.

49

50
“TO ME... INDUSTRIAL FORMS WERE ALL
THE MORE BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE THEY
WERE NEVER DESIGNED TO BE BEAUTIFUL.”

51
OTIS STEEL MILL 1930
CLEVELAND
People wondered if Margaret Bourke-White and her delicate camera
could stand up to the intense heat, hazard, and generally dirty and gritty
conditions inside a steel mill.
Black and white film at the time was sensitive to blue light, not the red
and orange lights that came from hot steel. All of her photos would
come out black but she solved the problem by bringing along a new style
of magnesium flare which produced white light. She had an assistant hold
them to light her scenes. This resulted in some of the best steel factory
photographs of that era and earned national attention.

52

FORT PECK DAM 1936
FORT PECK, MONTANA
Life magazine printed Bourke-White’s photograph on the cover
of its first issue on November 23. It solidified Fort Peck Dam’s
status as an icon of the machine age.
53

54

55
GREAT OHIO RIVER FLOOD 1937
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
Men and women line up seeking food and clothing from a relief station,
in front of a billboard proclaiming, “World’s Highest Standard of Living.”

56
STALIN 1941

1931
Ekaterina Dzhugashvili, the mother of Russian
leader Joseph Stalin, seated on park bench.
57
1931
Joseph Stalin’s great aunt, Dido-Lilo Dzhugashvili.

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
Survivors gaze at photographer Margaret Bourke-White
and rescuers from the United States Third Army during
the liberation of Buchenwald
58

BUCHENWALD
59

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
Prisoners at Buchenwald gaze from behind barbed
wire during the camp’s liberation by American forces.

61

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
Deformed by malnutrition, a Buchenwald
prisoner leans against his bunk after
trying to walk. Like other imprisoned
slave laborers, he worked in a Nazi
factory until tee feeble.
62
APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
Examining Buchenwald prisoners after the
camp’s liberation by U.S. troops.

63
APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
A Czech doctor (right) prepares to examine a Buchenwald concentration
camp inmate while other inmates surround him, awaiting treatment.

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
Prisoners, too emaciated to walk, at Buchenwald
during the camp’s liberation by American forces.
64

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
Prisoners at Buchenwald during the
camp’s liberation by American forces.
65

66
APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
Prisoners at Buchenwald display their identification
tattoos shortly after camp’s liberation by Allied forces.

67
APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
A newly liberated prisoner stands beside a
pile of human ashes and bones, Buchenwald.

68

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
German civilians are forced by American troops to bear
witness to Nazi atrocities at Buchenwald concentration
camp, mere miles from their own homes.
69

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
As German officers and Weimar civilians bear witness, after Buchenwald’s
liberation, to atrocities committed at the camp, a dummy in striped prisoner
garb hangs from a gallows, a gruesome demonstration of one of the many
public ways that inmates were murdered at the camp.
70

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
The remains of an incinerated prisoner
inside a Buchenwald cremation oven.
71
APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
German civilians are forced by
American troops to bear witness
to Nazi atrocities at Buchenwald
concentration camp, mere miles
from their own homes.

72

APRIL 1945
WEIMAR, GERMANY
The dead at Buchenwald, piled high
outside the camp’s incinerator plant.
73

1948
Mohandas K. Gandhi just a few
hours before his assassination
74

75

THE GREAT MIGRATION 1947
Millions of people fled shortly after the creation
of the nations of India and Pakistan
77

THE GREAT MIGRATION 1947
Mass migration during independence
of India and Pakistan in 1947

79

80
1947
Mosque within fort also packed with homeless moslems.
The great dome provides a measure of shelter against
the elements for some of the refugees.

1947
Spindly but determined old Sikh, carrying ailing wife,
sets out on the dangerous journey to India’s border
81
1947
This strange litter was devised to carry ages and
exhausted Moslem woman, sitting in a sheet with
legs drawn up. The bamboo pole is supported by her
brother-in-law and her son. When this photograph
was made, the family had been four days without food,
but men were managing to keep up with the convoy.

82

1947
Misery of the dispossessed is reflected in the face of
this Moslem boy, perched on the wall of the Purana
Qila fortress in New Delhi. Below him throusands of
his unhappy fellows who had fled their homes in terror,
are trying to survive until they can organize a convoy
for the long march to Pakistan. In their squalid city of
tents and lean-tos they have almost no room to sleep
and little to eat. Surrounded by filth and many will die
without ever leaving camp.
83

85

1947
Abandoned at roadside because they were unable to keep up
with caravan, this Moslem couple and their four grandchildren
have little hope of survival. The children’s father was killed by
Sikhs. Their mother was stricken with cholera and sent ahead
by truck in the hope that she might find medical care.

87

1947
The emigrant trains of crude wooden carts drawn by bullocks creak across the
barren land of the Punjab all day long. In this convoy, starkly silhouetted against
the vivid Indian sky, are 45,000 uprooted Sikhs on their way to the Ferozepore
and Ludhiana districts of the eastern Punjab. Unlike the U.S. wagon-train pioneers,
hopefully en route to a new land, these migrants have little to look forward to and
are losing everything that they cannot carry with them. Despite the presence of an
escort of Gurkha soldiers, thousands of stinking bodies along the road constantly
remind the travelers that they may never reach safety.

89
1947
Mother and child are part of caravan 25 days on road. More fortunate than
most, women can ride and has an umbrella for shade as she feeds her baby.

1947
As the bitter migration goes on a Moslem family
pauses to bury a child who died of starvation.
90

91

1947
Moslem refugee cholera patients in filthy conditions at Infectious Disease
Hospital upon their arrival after their long march from Delhi, India.

93
1947
Moslem refugee cholera patient with child, getting intravenous glucose
solution in the infusion room at Infectious Disease Hospital.

94

APARTHEID 1950
SOUTH AFRICA
South Africans holding a “STOP POLICE TERROR” banner listen to
a speaker during a Communist meeting. The Communist Party of South
Africa was a small but influential opposition group. It was especially active
in labor organizing. It was an inter-racial organization, some of whose
African members were also members of the African National Congress.
95

96

97
APARTHEID 1950
SOUTH AFRICA
During a Communist meeting, carpenter Phillip Mbhele, wearing “WE DON’T WANT PASSES” tag, angrily
speaks against the white Afrikaner’s pass system, which requires all Natives to carry one or more passes.
Passes were a kind of internal passport that africans had to carry anytime they were outside of the so-called
Native Reserves. They were universally hated as symbols os dispossession.

1950
SOPHIATOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
Black children with “EDUCATE THE CHILDREN AND SAVE THE RACE” banner sing a song
during an event at Sophiatown Native Location. Sophiatown was a racially mixed but mostly
black neighborhood near central Johannesburg. It had achieved near-legendary status as a
center of black culture and politics from the 1930s to the ‘50s. The government bulldozed it
in the mid-50s and moved its residents to Soweto, on the far outskirts of town.

99
1950
SOUTH AFRICA
Young dwellers of a shanty-town stand at the fence that marks the boundaries
of their home. Shanty-towns like this one, on the outskirts of Johannesburg,
were formed by homeless black squatters with nowhere else to go.

100
1950
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Gold miners nos. 1139 and 5122, both Mndaus, stand sweating in 95 degree heat
of a tunnel in Johannesburg’s Robinson deep mine, more than a mile underground.

101
1950
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Gold miners, wearing helmets and very high knee pads, perspire heavily while walking in 95 degree heat
to their jobs, working in a dangerous area in Robinson Deep mine tunnel, more than a mile underground.

102
1950
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
View of barefoot miners as they sit over the edge of a landing that
overlooks a courtyard in the Robinson Deep mine compound.

1950
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Miner’s barrack at the Robinson Deep mine provides concrete
bunks for as many as 40 men in a single room. Barracks like
this are usually kept clean and orderly. Penning men together
away from families is a system that breeds homosexuality.
103

104

SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS PROBELM 1950
105

106
1950
MOROKA, SOUTH AFRICA
Poor native woman fills a can with water at public faucets set up in the middle of Moroka, which housed
60,000 black workers on the outskirts of town. The Moroka township, established in 1947 as a place to
relocate Africans away from central Johannesburg, was known for its appalling conditions.

1950
SOUTH AFRICA
Young workers.
107

108
1950
SOUTH AFRICA
Tot System lets cape winegrowers pay workers partly
in “tots” of wine. Here, a farmer’s daughter serves a
noonday ration to a boy working in the field.

109
1950
SOUTH AFRICA
A young farm worker drinks his “tot,” the
wine that comprised part of his wages and
also led, for many, to alcoholism.

1950
SOUTH AFRICA
Two men at a bar. Alcoholism, a result of the Tot
System, was a major problem among farmworkers.
1950
SOUTH AFRICA
The roots of the Tot System, which led to problems
with alcoholism, go back to the days of slavery. Settler
farmers provided tots of wine periodically throughout
the day to their slaves to induce dependency as a form
of control. After emancipation, workers were paid partly
in wine for the same reason.

111
1950
SOUTH AFRICA
A man drinking.

APRIL 1950
SOUTH AFRICA
Grape pickers working at the farm Ryssel.

113
APRIL 1950
SOUTH WEST AFRICA
African native minders digging in the mine
workings to remove diamond-bearing gravel
from marine terraces where it is deposited.

THE FORGOTTEN WAR JULY 1950
KOREA
The 1st cavalry in Korea.
114

115

1952
KOREA
An American serving in Korea.
116

117
1951
KOREA
An American military man takes a nap.

1952
KOREA
South Korean and American
officers pore over maps.
118

119
NOVEMBER 1952
KOREA
Bullets and gunpowder.

1952
KOREA
Wounded South Koreans.
120
1951
KOREA
Turkish soldiers attend
to a wounded prisoner.

MARCH 1951
KOREA
Refugees cross into South Korea.
121

1952
KOREA
Troops on patrol in Korea.
122

123
1952
KOREA
South Korean troops.
JUNE 1952
KOREA
Three soldiers.

124

JUNE 1952
KOREA
Margaret Bourke-White shares
a meal with South Korean troops
in the field.
125

126
1952
KOREA
Slaughtered South Korean
prisoners and peasants.

127
1952
KOREA
A member of the South Korean National Police holds the severed
head of a North Korean communist guerrilla during the Korean War.

1951
KOREA
Turkish Army soldier on duty.

129
1953
KOREA
Fighter jets, F-86 Sabres, from the Fifth Air Force. The Korean
War was the first conflict in which the Sabre saw action.

DIANE
ARBUS
130

131
(MARCH 14, 1923 – JULY 26, 1971)
Diane Arbus was born Diane Nemerov in New York City. She is an American
photographer noted for her photographs of marginalized people such as dwarfs,
giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers, and others whose normality
was perceived by the general society as ugly or surreal. While growing up, her parents
weren’t involved in her life. She and her siblings were raised by maids and governesses
while her mother suffered from depression and her father was busy with work. Arbus
separated herself from her family and lavish childhood.
At age 18, Diane married her childhood sweetheart who she has dated since 14,
Allan Arbus. She received her first camera from Allan and enrolled in classes with
photographer, Berenice Abbott. Allan was a photographer for the US Army Signal
Corps in WWII. While he was stationed during the early 1940s, Diane documented
her first pregnancy which sparked her interest in photography. After the war in 1946,
they started a commercial photography business called “Diane & Allan Arbus” with
Diane as the art director and Allan as the photographer. She would come up with
the concepts for their shoots and take care fo the models. Diane eventually grew
dissatisfied with this role, a role that even her husband thought was demeaning. In
1956, Arbus quit the commercial photography business. Allan was very supportive of
her, even after she quit commercial photography and began developing an independent
relationship to photography. They separated in 1959 and got divorced in 1969 but still
remained close because of their daughters. Arbus began a relationship with art director
and painter, Marvin Israel until her death. He was married and made it clear to Arbus
that he was never going to leave his wife but pushed Arbus very hard regarding her work.
He was the one who encouraged her to create her first portfolio.

133
Diane Arbus would wander the streets of New York City with a 35mm Nikon. In 1962, she switched from her camera
which produced grainy, rectangular images to a twin-lens reface Rolleiflex camera which produced more detailed
square images, on larger 2 1/4 film. She followed strangers and would wait in doorways until she saw someone she
felt compelled to photograph. Arbus began to get more strategic in 1958, plotting in advance the type of people she
wanted to document and numbered her film as she was developing her photos. Her first numbered negative is from
1956 and her last known negative is labeled #7459.
Diane Arbus experienced depressive episodes during her life, similar to those experienced by her mother, which may
have been made worse by symptoms of hepatitis. In 1968, she wrote, “I got up and down a lot,” and her ex-husband
noted that she had “violent changes of mood.” On July 26, 1971, Arbus was living at Westbeth Artists Community in
New York City when she took her own life by ingesting barbiturates and slashing her wrists with a razor. She wrote the
words, “Last Supper” in her diary and placed her appointment book on the stairs leading up to the bathroom. Marvin
Israel found her body in the bathtub two days later. Her ashes were buried at Ferncliff Cemetery but no record exists
at the cemetery. In 1972, a year after she died by suicide, Dian Arbus became the first American photographer to have
photographs displayed at the Venice Biennale. Millions traveled to see these exhibitions in 1971-1979.

134
1956
NEW YORK CITY
Woman with Parcels.

1956
NEW YORK CITY
Woman in a Mink Stole and Bow Shoes.
135

136

137
A YOUNG MAN IN CURLERS AT HOME 1966
WEST 20TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY
A close-up shows the man’s pock-marked face with plucked eyebrows, and his hand
with long fingernails holds a cigarette. Early reactions to the photograph were strong;
for example, someone spat on it in 1967 at the Museum of Modern Art.

138
CHILD WITH TOY HAND GRENADE 1962
CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK CITY
Colin Wood with the left strap of his jumper awkwardly hanging off his shoulder, tensely holds his long, thin arms
by his side. Clenching a toy grenade in his right hand and holding his left hand in a claw-like gesture, his facial
expression is maniacal. However, the contact sheet demonstrates that his deranged appearance was an editorial
choice by Arbus who took a number of shots of this really quite ordinary boy who just shows off for the camera.

139

TEENAGE COUPLE 1963
HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK CITY
Wearing long coats and “worldlywise expressions,”
two adolescents appear older than their ages.
140

141
YOUNG BROOKLYN FAMILY GOING FOR A SUNDAY OUTING 1966
HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK CITY
Richard and Marylin Dauria, who lived in the Bronx. Marylin holds their baby daughter,
and Richard holds the hand of their young son, who is mentally challenged.

TRIPLETS IN THEIR BEDROOM 1963
NEW JERSEY
Three girls sit at the heaad of a bed.

143
1962
CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK CITY
Two boys smoking.

144
IDENTICAL TWINS 1967
ROSELLE, NEW JERSEY
Young twin sisters Cathleen and Colleen Wade stand side by side in dark dresses. The
uniformity of their clothing and haircut characterize them as being twins while the facial
expressions strongly accentuate their individuality. This photograph is echoed in Stanley
Kubrick’s film, The Shining, which features twins in an identical pose as ghosts.

1965
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA
Mae West in her bedroom.
1967
NEW YORK CITY
Patriotic young man with a flag.

1967
NEW YORK CITY
Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a Pro-War parade. With
an American flag at his side, he wears a bow tie, a pin in the shape
of a bow tie with an American flag motif, and two round button
badges: “Bomb Hanoi” and “God Bless America / Support Our
Boys in Vietnam”. The image may cause the viewer to feel both
different from the boy and sympathetic toward him.
146

147
NAKED MAN BEING A WOMAN 1968
NEW YORK CITY
The subject has been described as in a “Venus-on-the-half-shell pose” or as “a
Madonna turned in contrapposto... with his penis hidden between his legs.” The
parted curtain behind the man adds to the theatrical quality of the photograph.

148
A FAMILY ON THEIR LAWN ONE SUNDAY 1968
WESTCHESTER, NEW YORK
A woman and a man sunbathe while a boy bends over a small plastic wading pool behind them. In 1972, Neil Selkirk was put in charge of producing an exhibition
print of this image when Marvin Israel advised him to make the background trees appear “like a theatrical backdrop that might at any moment roll forward
across the lawn.” This anecdote illustrates vividly just how fundamental dialectics between appearance and substance are for the understanding of Arbus’ art.

149

A VERY YOUNG BABY 1968
NEW YORK CITY
A photograph for Harper’s Bazaar depicts Gloria Vanderbilt’s
then-infant son, the future CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper.

151

1970
MARYLAND
152

153

A JEWISH GIANT AT HOME WITH HIS PARENTS 1970
THE BRONX, NEW YORK
Eddie Carmel, the “Jewish Giant,” stands in his family’s apartment with his much shorter mother and father. Arbus
reportedly said to a friend about this picture: “You know how every mother has nightmares when she’s pregnant that
her baby will be born a monster?... I think I got that in the mother’s face....” The photograph motivated Carmel’s
cousin to narrate a 1999 audio documentary about him

155

156
IMOGEN
CUNNINGHAM

157
(APRIL 12, 1883 — JUNE 23, 1976)
Imogene Cunningham was an American photographer known for her botanical photography, nudes, and industrial
landscapes. She was born in Portland, Oregon, the fifth of ten children. She grew up in Seattle, Washington and at
the age of eighteen in 1901, she bought her first camera. A 4x5 inch view camera, inspired by Gertrude Käsebier’s
photographs. With the help of her chemistry professor, Horace Byers, she began to study the chemistry behind
photography and she subsidized her tuition by photographing plants for the botany department. In 1907, Cunningham
graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in chemistry and her thesis was titles, “Modern Processes
of Photography.” After graduating college, she went to work for Edward S Curtis in his Seattle studio, learning about
the portrait business and practical photography. Cunningham learned the technique of platinum printing and became
fascinated by the process. In Seattle, Cunningham opened a studio and won acclaim for portraiture and pictorial work.
Most of her work consisted of sitters in their own homes, in her living room, or in the woods surrounding Cunningham’s
cottage. She became a desired photographer and exhibited at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1913.
In 1920, Imogen and her family moved to San Francisco where she refined her style. She took an interest in pattern and
detail, becoming increasingly interested in botanical photography, especially flowers. Between 1923 and 1925, she carried
out an in-depth study of the Magnolia flower. Later, she turned her attention to industrial landscapes in Los Angeles and
Oakland. Cunningham changed direction again and became more interested with the human form, particularly hands, and
the hands of artists and musicians. This interest led to her employment by Vanity Fair, photographing stars without make-up.
As Cunningham moved away from pictorialism and toward sharp-focus photography, she joined with like-minded photographers
to form Group f/64 to promote this style of photography. In the 1940s, she turned to documentary street photography,
which she executed as a side project while supporting herself with commercial and studio photography. Imogen Cunningham
continued to take photos shortly before her death at age 93 in San Francisco, California.

158

159
MILLS COLLEGE AMPHITHEATER 1921
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

160
REFUGIO BEACH 1925
GOLETA, CALIFORNIA

MOTHER LODE
URBAN DECONSTRUCTION

OIL TANKS 1940

SHREADED WHEAT TOWER 1928
163

164

SHREADED WHEAT FACTORY 1928
165

ABSTRACT OF CLOUDS

167
CLOUDS 1939
ARIZONA

168
STONEHENGE 1961
WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND

169
WATER TOWER 1961
FINLAND

FAGEOL VENTILATORS 1934

FOREST 1960
FRANCE
171
URBAN DECONSTRUCTION 1956
NEW YORK CITY

172
AGAVE DESIGN 1920

173

174

TWO CALLAS 1925
175

176
CALLA BUD 1929

177

178
COLLETIA CRUCIATA 1929

179

180
STAPELIA 1929

STAPELIA 1928
181

STAPELIA 1928

STAPELIA IN GLASS 1928
183

184

AGAVE 1930
CASKIE’S GARDEN
185

186
AMARYLLIS 1933

187

COLLETIA CRUCIATA DESIGN FOR A SCREEN 1939

ARAUJIA SEED POD 1956
189

ARAUJIA 1953

191

192

HELEN 1928
193

TWO SISTERS 1928

TRIANGLES PLUS ONE 1928
195

196
JOHN BOVINGDON 1929

197

198
MARTHA GRAHAM 1931

199

200
MARTHA GRAHAM 1931

201

202

MARTHA GRAHAM 1931
203

HELENA MEYER 1939
CANYON DE CHELLY, ARIZONA
204

205

206
AFTER THE BATH 1952

DREAM WALKING 1968
207

208

IRENE ’BOBBIE’ LIBARRY 1976
209

FRIDA KAHLO RIVERA 1931
Painter and wife of Diego Rivera
210

211

212
FRIDA KAHLO RIVERA 1931

213

214
BLIND SCULPTOR 1952

215

216

RUTH ASAWA WORKING ON A WIRE SCULPTURE 1952
217

RUTH ASAWA 1952
Ruth Asawa holding a form within a form sculpture. A looped wire sculpture.
218

RUTH ASAWA 1957
219

RUTH ASAWA 1957

RUTH ASAWA AND HER CHILDREN 1957
221

222
RUTH ASAWA 1973

WIRE SCULPTURE AND SHADOWS
223

TYPE NOTE
THE TEXT OF THIS BOOK IS SET IN BRANDON GROTESQUE.
THE HEADER TEXT IS SET IN HOEFLER’S DIDOT IN L96 LIGHT.
THIS BOOK WAS DESIGNED BY HANNA KIM

226