Speaker 1: Personology is a production of I Heart Radio, I Love
Speaker 1: the Evening, Sold to a Friend, The Way of It's Today,
Speaker 1: fair Well, The Home of a Quiet Train, The Calmness
Speaker 1: of His Jottle. Deanne Arvis was a renowned photographer who
Speaker 1: changed our view of acceptable subject matter with at the
Speaker 1: time shocking and emotionally riveting photographs of people considered to
Speaker 1: be on the fringes of society or she called them
Speaker 1: freaks in quite ordinary places, as well as moving photography
Speaker 1: into the world of art, What fil Me, What makes Me?
Speaker 1: Feed on? Though? Welcome to Personology. I'm Dr Gayl Saltz
Speaker 1: and joining me today is Arthur lu Bau, a journalist
Speaker 1: who has written for The New Yorker, The New York
Speaker 1: Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair. He is the author of
Speaker 1: Deanne Arby's Portrait of a Photographer. Born in March ninete
Speaker 1: as Deanne Nemerov to David Nemerov and Gertrude Russek Nemerov,
Speaker 1: a Jewish couple and immigrants from Russia. They lived in
Speaker 1: New York City and owned a Fifth Avenue department store
Speaker 1: that sold furs and other women's clothing called Russex, which
Speaker 1: was started by Gertrude's family. Their family, as a result,
Speaker 1: was well to do. What makes to put it simply,
Speaker 1: Deanne hated her background, as she viewed it all as
Speaker 1: horrible imposition in a way on her. She thought her
Speaker 1: mother was completely fake, that she aspired to a kind
Speaker 1: of upper class dignity and glamour that Deanne rejected as
Speaker 1: being fall and the fashion business itself, she once said,
Speaker 1: required you to have a fake front, because if you
Speaker 1: showed any sign of weakness, it was all over. And
Speaker 1: of course fashion is in a way a pretense. But
Speaker 1: the interesting thing, just as an aside, is that Dianne
Speaker 1: remained fascinated by a knowledgeable of fashion throughout her career,
Speaker 1: her life, and she would talk about it in a
Speaker 1: way that people less knowledgeable would would find impressive. And
Speaker 1: she herself was always fashioned forward, and she dressed very well.
Speaker 1: So began this whole arena, let's say, of authentic versus inauthentic,
Speaker 1: wearing a mask or covering up, which to some degree
Speaker 1: she considered right fashion and her mother very much wearing
Speaker 1: this fake mask versus being a secret, revealing, being intimate,
Speaker 1: being real and authentic. These two poles were a theme
Speaker 1: that started in her young childhood and really remained throughout
Speaker 1: her entire life as very important and ultimately very important
Speaker 1: in her artwork. Yes, and it's important to mention as
Speaker 1: well that her mother was a depressive. She basically stayed
Speaker 1: in bed a lot, right, she did well, She did
Speaker 1: stay in bad till about noon, and then she would
Speaker 1: make herself up and then she would go out to lunch.
Speaker 1: But yes, what you said before is very true and
Speaker 1: and very significant in Arbace's career. One of the things
Speaker 1: that fascinated her was the dawning of a mask, and
Speaker 1: in particular in a photograph, showing the gap between what
Speaker 1: she called the intention and the effect, so that you
Speaker 1: would be able to see, say in a female impersonator,
Speaker 1: the hairline where the wig met the forehead, or you could,
Speaker 1: in many cases, see that a person was trying to
Speaker 1: be something that he or she was not. She felt
Speaker 1: that her family, certainly her mother and even she was
Speaker 1: being forced to be something that she was not, that
Speaker 1: internally she wasn't really this wealthy daughter of this wealthy family,
Speaker 1: with this mother who appeared to be playing the mommy
Speaker 1: role but in fact was absent really because she suffered
Speaker 1: depression recurrent depression and was therefore literally emotionally as well
Speaker 1: as actually not around, you know, in her room, not
Speaker 1: interacting with her daughter. Alternatively, the father, who seemed more
Speaker 1: emotionally available in certain ways and that he didn't suffer
Speaker 1: constantly from depression, was very consumed with his business. It's
Speaker 1: always difficult, as you well know, to speculate on what
Speaker 1: causes a person's psychological lax or issues or whatever were
Speaker 1: you want to use. Danne felt throughout her life that
Speaker 1: she was somehow not real and that this need to
Speaker 1: find in other people a reflection that would prove her
Speaker 1: own reality. And I think that it started in some
Speaker 1: way in her childhood. Was her mother's periodic absences, if
Speaker 1: you will, psychological absences? Was it that her father she
Speaker 1: was his favorite and yet he wasn't there really And
Speaker 1: she knew because she had an older brother, Howard. She
Speaker 1: knew that her father, David Nemrov, could, if he wished,
Speaker 1: become extremely chilly and freeze out Howard, in particular, if
Speaker 1: Howard did something that he found unacceptable. I think it's
Speaker 1: important for people to understand that, first of all, Deanne
Speaker 1: had what I would call genetic loading and the words
Speaker 1: she had a mother a first degree relative with recurrent
Speaker 1: major depression I mean significant depression, and that is likely
Speaker 1: to prime their offspring, if you will, to be biologically
Speaker 1: more likely to have depression as well. But she also
Speaker 1: suffered the trauma of having a depressed mother. And when
Speaker 1: your primary caretaker is really emotionally unavailable for you, even
Speaker 1: though not of her own making, it is traumatic because
Speaker 1: it's a kind of neglect, a kind of emotional neglect.
Speaker 1: And the father, as you pointed out, you know, he,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, may have been more emotionally available
Speaker 1: with ambition was important to him. Making money was important
Speaker 1: to him, Appearing successful was important to him, and he
Speaker 1: wanted his children essentially to do the same as an
Speaker 1: extension of himself, you know, to be also highly successful.
Speaker 1: She had two siblings, Howard, who was older, and Renee,
Speaker 1: who was younger. And Howard, as the first boy, was
Speaker 1: incredibly bright, was an excellent student. But as you said,
Speaker 1: if he didn't do the things that the father wanted
Speaker 1: to do, she had an example of what could happen
Speaker 1: emotionally to you. You're right in distinguishing between the expectations
Speaker 1: of the son and the daughters. David Neumar wanted Howard
Speaker 1: to go into the family business, and Howard refused. He
Speaker 1: did go to Harvard, so that was good, but he
Speaker 1: was going to be a poet, which was not so good.
Speaker 1: And he a very successful poet. Became a poet laureate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he reached the pinnacle of his field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he became a very successful poet. Although he himself always
Speaker 1: admitted that Deanne was by far the more creative and
Speaker 1: original of the two, and the third sibling, Renee, was
Speaker 1: something of a an outsider, whereas Deanne was very bonded
Speaker 1: in all sorts of ways with Howard. She eventually distanced
Speaker 1: herself from Renee. Let's talk about those relationships. In that bond.
Speaker 1: There seems to be a lot of historical speak of
Speaker 1: Howard and Deanne being very, very close. What do you
Speaker 1: make of this discussion that, in fact, she had a
Speaker 1: sexual relationship with Howard from a young age and really
Speaker 1: up until close to her death. Deanne told people, friends
Speaker 1: and then later her psychiatrist that she had started having
Speaker 1: sex with Howard as a young teenager when their parents
Speaker 1: were out of the apartment, and that the relationship continued
Speaker 1: right up until her death. Deanne was extremely sexually and
Speaker 1: maybe as a result of this, we don't really know.
Speaker 1: She was very sexually forward as a young teenage girl.
Speaker 1: To what extend Howard's sexual activity with her created the
Speaker 1: conditions that produced that attitude, we don't know, But it
Speaker 1: is true that Deanne required the attention of other people
Speaker 1: to get a sense of her own actual being. So
Speaker 1: she found it very difficult when a man with whom
Speaker 1: she was involved moved away from her, even when she
Speaker 1: had several minute once and she was married. She still
Speaker 1: found this extremely painful and talked about the dissolution of
Speaker 1: herself in the wake of the ends of these affairs.
Speaker 1: So sexual play between siblings is something that is not
Speaker 1: that unusual exactly and probably for that time, particularly when
Speaker 1: parents maybe were less concerned or attentive or intervening. Certainly
Speaker 1: parents as absent as these wouldn't be unusual, but sexual
Speaker 1: intercourse would definitely be unusual, and certainly something that continued.
Speaker 1: Definitely if it were, particularly when they not only become
Speaker 1: adults but become involved with other people, would be very unusual.
Speaker 1: But there was something important perhaps for Diane, and we
Speaker 1: see this in other ways of her having the power
Speaker 1: to seduce and keep end the keeping part in intimacy
Speaker 1: seems to be a recurrent theme. Who she could share
Speaker 1: her secrets or have a secret with and know their
Speaker 1: secrets That was incredibly important to her. Yeah, she was
Speaker 1: fascinated by secrets, and she emphasized how good she was
Speaker 1: at finding out people's secrets, and she was parsimonious in
Speaker 1: doling out her own. So yes, I think this was
Speaker 1: a secret between Deane and Howard. Howard also, it's worth
Speaker 1: noting became a terrible alcoholic, and it's also worth noting
Speaker 1: that his wife said that Deanne was Howard's idea of
Speaker 1: the perfect woman. Deanne met Alan Artists when she was
Speaker 1: thirteen years old. He was five years older. The funny
Speaker 1: thing about it was that Alan had gone to work
Speaker 1: at Russex as a penniless but bright young man, and
Speaker 1: when he and Deanne became romantically interested in each other,
Speaker 1: Deanne's parents, Gertrude and David, were horrified. But what's funny
Speaker 1: about it in a way is that the same thing
Speaker 1: had happened with Gertrude and David, because David had been
Speaker 1: a penniless man who had gone to work at Russex.
Speaker 1: So now Deanne was in a way repeating her mother's
Speaker 1: action and choice in choosing Alan, and it horrified her parents,
Speaker 1: who really tried to break it up, but we're unsuccessful
Speaker 1: and actually had Deanne unders to it at the time
Speaker 1: that it was a repetition. She may not have been
Speaker 1: as interested in Alan, but it sounds like that was
Speaker 1: not on her radar in terms of, you know, why
Speaker 1: she might be choosing him. The idea that she would
Speaker 1: be her mother in some way right terrified her. Horrified
Speaker 1: her was as horrified her, and so the wish to
Speaker 1: keep unconscious that she was being like her mother would
Speaker 1: be pretty powerful, the power to deny that to herself.
Speaker 1: So in a way not surprising, but this relationship, even
Speaker 1: though you know here she is at Fieldston, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it would be anticipated by her family and by her
Speaker 1: teachers that she would go to college, etcetera, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: in fact she stays involved and really upon graduation, essentially
Speaker 1: they get married. It shocked her classmates because she was
Speaker 1: such a smart student that she wasn't going on to college.
Speaker 1: They all went to college. I mean they were these
Speaker 1: were upper middle class and many cases quite wealthy Jewish kids.
Speaker 1: They were expected to go to college. That's true today,
Speaker 1: the Fieldston would be unheard of any anyone graduating there
Speaker 1: to not be going to college. Yeah, so it's amazed
Speaker 1: and i'd say shocked her friends when she said, no,
Speaker 1: she's going to become Mrs Allan Arbis. So she decides
Speaker 1: she's going to be Mrs Allan Arbis. And of course
Speaker 1: they don't have any money, but the father says, okay,
Speaker 1: you Alan can take photos and sort of become the
Speaker 1: fashion photographer for the store. It was because he liked
Speaker 1: taking pictures that David Nemer very generously said that he
Speaker 1: would help him set up the studio and he would
Speaker 1: give him work. You know, back then there was no
Speaker 1: art photography market, so if you wanted to be a photographer,
Speaker 1: you needed to do fashion work or advertising work of
Speaker 1: some sort or else. And Dan later did magazine work.
Speaker 1: So at this time they were doing fashion work and
Speaker 1: they did set up a studio. It's interrupted by Alan
Speaker 1: going off to the war, because this is right at
Speaker 1: the time America enters the Second World War. And then
Speaker 1: he comes back and then they're really in business together.
Speaker 1: Alan operated the camera and Dianne was the stylist, which
Speaker 1: was a two part job really, one was coming up
Speaker 1: with the concept of the picture, which was in a
Speaker 1: way the creative work, and the second, which Alan later
Speaker 1: told me was quite humiliating for her, was arranging the
Speaker 1: skirt and doing various things to make sure that the
Speaker 1: model looked good, sort of the work equivalent of housekeeping.
Speaker 1: It was very much a gendered role. I would say,
Speaker 1: the man operated the equipment and the women the models
Speaker 1: were almost all women, so took care of their dresses.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really totally driven by Alan in the sense
Speaker 1: that ultimately he ends up being in some ways her
Speaker 1: biggest supporter in terms of starting her artistic career. But
Speaker 1: it was sort of the cultural division of labor and
Speaker 1: the father supporting Alan being the lead on this. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they already had a daughter. They would later have
Speaker 1: a second daughter. Alan was a good father, but still
Speaker 1: the mother had a primary role, and Danne played that
Speaker 1: role really to the hilt. I mean she was she
Speaker 1: was an extremely devoted mother she at least never expressed
Speaker 1: any real ambivalence about. But the other role, yes, being
Speaker 1: a stylist, eventually did come to appall her because remember
Speaker 1: she had rejected her mother's and father's too devotion to
Speaker 1: fashion and the fakeness of it. And now she was
Speaker 1: doing that. Now this was her career. She was spending
Speaker 1: much of her day helping to create these illusions, and
Speaker 1: it began to drive her crazy. She's really conflicted about
Speaker 1: the role, frankly, of just of being a woman. What
Speaker 1: does it mean to be a woman? And suddenly she
Speaker 1: talked often about the most important and sort of greatest
Speaker 1: moments of her life being childbirth and menstruation. She talked
Speaker 1: often of those two topics, but those were two ways
Speaker 1: in which she could verify her physical reality, both the
Speaker 1: pain of childbirth and the physical evidence of men situation,
Speaker 1: and of course those are very female things. I've never
Speaker 1: thought that she was taking pride in being a woman.
Speaker 1: It was that she was taking satisfaction in these physical
Speaker 1: manifestations or or or feelings that were intense enough that
Speaker 1: they would register. As a psychoanalyst, I would say evidence
Speaker 1: that you have to procreate to, you know, make life.
Speaker 1: Those things resonated for her. She appreciated that power of femininity,
Speaker 1: the other part of the trappings of I arranged the skirts,
Speaker 1: I vacuumed the house. Those felt demeaning to her, not
Speaker 1: the opposite of being powerful, but they were the two
Speaker 1: sides of being a woman at this juncture. She is
Speaker 1: not taking pictures. She has not involved in the photography
Speaker 1: end of things. They together as a team, I guess
Speaker 1: I would say, are being successful. They're getting shoots in
Speaker 1: Vogue and Glamour, end high end fashion magazines, and there
Speaker 1: is something about her eye that Alan reports in terms
Speaker 1: of those photographs also being very sellable. Danne came up
Speaker 1: with the concepts. So the concept is the essential part
Speaker 1: of a fashion photograph. The mechanics of it many people
Speaker 1: can do. I mean, Alan was proficient, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly creative. Danne was the creative one, and so he
Speaker 1: recognized this from the beginning, you know, and Deanne was
Speaker 1: taking pictures. They took a sabbatical in Europe for a
Speaker 1: year and she took a number of pictures, and already
Speaker 1: she had a distinctive way of looking at things. Part
Speaker 1: of understanding the psyche of Danne Arbys is understanding the
Speaker 1: expectations of the role of women in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: which was to be exclusively a homemaker and mother. For
Speaker 1: a woman who wanted to be a career artist, it
Speaker 1: was particularly challenging to raise a child and be true
Speaker 1: to your creative instincts and aspirations, a conflict that many
Speaker 1: women still struggle with. It was even more of a
Speaker 1: struggle for Dan Arbys the nineteen fifties. She by report,
Speaker 1: really was a good mother. I mean, she was close
Speaker 1: to her both of her daughters. If anything, she was
Speaker 1: too attentive. If anything, she didn't have enough boundaries, especially
Speaker 1: with the older daughter. Allen told me that the counselor
Speaker 1: at the younger daughter's camp would read Dann's letters to
Speaker 1: Amy as the name of the younger daughter, and he'd
Speaker 1: never read such letters. And I've read some of them,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they're amazing letters. Lack of boundaries is a
Speaker 1: really important theme in her life. That she went back
Speaker 1: and forth in terms of creating walls and at the
Speaker 1: same time having difficulty having any boundaries at all. She
Speaker 1: clearly loved her husband Alan, but she had difficulty remaining faithful.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even clear to me whether being monogamous was
Speaker 1: something that mattered to either of them. No, it wasn't
Speaker 1: not sexually faithful, but emotionally faithful. Yes, these were very
Speaker 1: different things to them. Being emotionally faithful to one another,
Speaker 1: which he remained even after they separated into worst he did,
Speaker 1: but he fell in love with another woman, and that
Speaker 1: was a very big problem for Dan. That was the betrayal,
Speaker 1: not a sexual betrayal. That's correct. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: having sex with other people was not too typical of
Speaker 1: any marriage in this circle. It was in this artistic
Speaker 1: New York circle. Yes, people, especially men, but women too
Speaker 1: had had affairs while they were married. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that it's so different then from now. It's just maybe
Speaker 1: people talk about it more. Yeah, there was this fake
Speaker 1: front that we're talking about Indian. Part of her trying
Speaker 1: to transgress boundaries was this urge not to be fake.
Speaker 1: When Alan fell in love with a woman, her name
Speaker 1: is Zora Lampert, she would become a well known actress
Speaker 1: um She was a very talented actress, and Alan was
Speaker 1: studying to be an actor because it was his lifelong ambition.
Speaker 1: Yet he really wanted to be an actor, yes, not
Speaker 1: a photographer. And d M was okay with it. She
Speaker 1: could deal with Alan being in love with Zora. What
Speaker 1: the problem became was that Zora could not accept that
Speaker 1: Allan was involved with her and with Deanne at the
Speaker 1: same time, and it was Zora who said that you
Speaker 1: will have to leave Deanne if you want to remain
Speaker 1: with me, And that was devastating to d N because
Speaker 1: Alan did choose to move out so that he could
Speaker 1: be with Zora. But Zora told me that before this
Speaker 1: happened once at a party, to her horror. Really, Deanne
Speaker 1: showed up with Alan because she wanted to meet Zora,
Speaker 1: and she was as nice as could be, but she
Speaker 1: intimidated or because getting back to fashion, she was so
Speaker 1: beautifully dressed and expensively dressed in a way that Zora,
Speaker 1: who was then a struggling actors could never have afforded.
Speaker 1: She wanted to meet her and was very nice to her,
Speaker 1: but clearly there was some competitive like I'm the one,
Speaker 1: so let's not forget that. So Zora thought, yes, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break here, be right back. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the moment when really, um, I mean, she had
Speaker 1: been involved certainly in the in the arranging and the
Speaker 1: creating of these fashion photos. At what point did she
Speaker 1: decide I really can't do this anymore. This is not creative,
Speaker 1: this is not who I want to be. And at
Speaker 1: what point did Alan support her in making this greety guitar.
Speaker 1: There's a very dramatic moment where there were just three
Speaker 1: people in the studio, Dean, Allen and a friend of theirs,
Speaker 1: Robert Brown, who told me about it, and Allen also
Speaker 1: talked about it with me um where Deane just suddenly said,
Speaker 1: at the end of a session with a model, I
Speaker 1: can't do this anymore. It was shocking to both of
Speaker 1: the men in the room because I think our dissatisfaction
Speaker 1: was not a secret, but this break seemed like a
Speaker 1: real break, and she quit. They were no longer working together,
Speaker 1: and Deanne was going out on her own with a
Speaker 1: thirty five millimeter camera at first to photograph in the
Speaker 1: way that New York street photographers did back then. She
Speaker 1: went to Coney Island. She eventually went to a side
Speaker 1: show on street. She went on street to photograph people
Speaker 1: who were passing by. She became a street photographer, which
Speaker 1: there were a number of in New York at that time.
Speaker 1: There's one extremely moving story, at least to me, that
Speaker 1: Allan's assistant told me of of. One day, Alan came
Speaker 1: back to the studio and asked where Dan's prints were.
Speaker 1: The assistant said, well, I haven't done them yet because
Speaker 1: I'm still doing our work from the fashion studio, and
Speaker 1: Alan said, you got to remember, Dan's work is the
Speaker 1: most important work that goes on here. So he definitely
Speaker 1: did as he had really from the beginning understand that
Speaker 1: Danne was a very talented and creative person in a
Speaker 1: way that he was not, in a way that you know, really,
Speaker 1: in fairness, a few people are. So he did support her,
Speaker 1: and he told me that in a way it was
Speaker 1: their separation that allowed her to do what she did,
Speaker 1: because he would never if if they've been living together,
Speaker 1: permitted her to go to some of the risky places
Speaker 1: that she wound up going to take her pictures. So
Speaker 1: it's important to realize that intermittently she is having periods
Speaker 1: of depression, of real depression, and periods not but that
Speaker 1: her choice to motivated obviously by her artistic passion, to
Speaker 1: go to places that were dangerous and put herself potentially
Speaker 1: in harm's way, does seem really self destructive. She took
Speaker 1: sexual risks, She took physical risks in setting up relationships
Speaker 1: with potential people she would photograph, in having photographic sessions,
Speaker 1: and she maintained these relationships. She got involved sexually with
Speaker 1: many of her subjects. There was something thrilling obviously for her,
Speaker 1: but also the risk, which I would argue seemed important
Speaker 1: and maybe self destructive. Potentially may have been spurred on
Speaker 1: by you know, whatever feelings associated with depression, you know, guilt,
Speaker 1: self defeat in some ways, but it was exhilarating for
Speaker 1: her At the same time, it was definitely exhilarating. I
Speaker 1: myself don't view the risk taking of her work as
Speaker 1: self destructive anymore than you would say a war photographer
Speaker 1: was being self destructive by putting himself or herself at risk.
Speaker 1: But it is certainly true that she derived a more
Speaker 1: or less sexual thrill from these encounters, even if they
Speaker 1: didn't involve sex. I would argue a sexual a massochistic
Speaker 1: sexual thrill. Maybe, I mean she she once said that
Speaker 1: going into somebody's apartment was a little bit like going
Speaker 1: for a sexual encounter with a man and then seeing
Speaker 1: his wife slippers in the room, And that might be massochistic,
Speaker 1: but it also gave her a sense and I think
Speaker 1: you said this earlier, of her own power, that she
Speaker 1: was able in the same way that that seducing men
Speaker 1: gave her a sense of her own power and her
Speaker 1: own keep getting back to this her own reality and
Speaker 1: also getting back to what we're saying before. It was
Speaker 1: a repudiation of the world that her parents had aspired to,
Speaker 1: So instead of trying to move up, she was looking
Speaker 1: at what was going on down. And she told a
Speaker 1: story to Studs Turkle, who interviewed her for a book
Speaker 1: he was doing on the Depression, that when she went
Speaker 1: to see the Hooverville in Central Park, the place where
Speaker 1: homeless people were living in the height of the depression,
Speaker 1: she found it that there was some kind of thrilling
Speaker 1: fascination that she had for this world that was barred
Speaker 1: to her, that had a kind of underworld that didn't
Speaker 1: exist in her very cost and restricted upbringing, and she
Speaker 1: wanted in. She photographed sideshow quote freaks, which they called
Speaker 1: themselves correct outliers, circus people, nudists, transvestites, which at the
Speaker 1: time were certainly considered to be very much outsiders. She
Speaker 1: also photographed families, middle class families, women and children. I
Speaker 1: just want to quote from her. Freaks was a thing
Speaker 1: I photographed a lot. There's a quality of legend about freaks,
Speaker 1: like a person in a fairy tale who stops you
Speaker 1: and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go
Speaker 1: through life dreading they'll have traumatic experience. Freaks were born
Speaker 1: with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life.
Speaker 1: They're aristocrats. For her, this is the opposite of where
Speaker 1: she came from, and it's where she wanted to be,
Speaker 1: and it's inside of her and she's taking pictures of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much that can be said about her interest
Speaker 1: in sideshow freaks. For one thing, as you say they
Speaker 1: were performers, she never photographed people who were deformed by burns.
Speaker 1: She did think that they had somehow experienced something or
Speaker 1: done something more intense than she had herself, and they'd
Speaker 1: survived it. And this intensity of experience we keep getting
Speaker 1: back to you because it's what she was looking for,
Speaker 1: and this ability to feel something strongly enough like childbirth
Speaker 1: that her her sense of her own self would be reaffirmed.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the photographs, because you've talked
Speaker 1: to some of the subjects of these photographs and sometimes
Speaker 1: they didn't even recognize themselves, or that's not how they
Speaker 1: thought they looked. There was something that she clearly brought
Speaker 1: out or imbued into this photograph in some unusual and
Speaker 1: creative way that even the people involved didn't necessarily recognize.
Speaker 1: But she also spent time developing some sort of relationship
Speaker 1: or making something happen in the moment that she would
Speaker 1: then capture that she wanted to capture, whether she evoked
Speaker 1: that by having sex with the person or or speaking
Speaker 1: with them, or evolving their relationships. She had different techniques
Speaker 1: for accomplishing what she always wanted to do, which was
Speaker 1: to get people to drop their mask. She wanted to
Speaker 1: see what was lying under their public facade, so sometimes
Speaker 1: she would just exhaust them. A shoe could go on
Speaker 1: for hours until the person that she was photographing couldn't
Speaker 1: maintain that pose anymore. You can argue that that expression
Speaker 1: of weariness is maybe not entirely the accurate person that
Speaker 1: she was seeing, but it did have a force that
Speaker 1: a smiling picture didn't have. One of the Aunt's most
Speaker 1: fam his portraits is called Child with Toy hand Grenade
Speaker 1: in Central Park. In it, a young boy stands in
Speaker 1: a strained and awkward pose with one of the suspenders
Speaker 1: of his shorts falling off his shoulder. His face is
Speaker 1: pulled back into a grimace, and his hands are clenched
Speaker 1: the right one around a realistic looking toy hand grenade.
Speaker 1: Colin would the boy with the toy grenade the man. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously he didn't remember the actual session, but he remembered
Speaker 1: what was going on in his life because his parents
Speaker 1: had separated and he was living basically on sugar, and
Speaker 1: so he was very he's still actually a pretty hyper person,
Speaker 1: but he was very hyper back then. But if you
Speaker 1: look at the contact sheet of the of the various
Speaker 1: pictures that she took of Colin, he's clowning, but in
Speaker 1: this one he's grimacing and looks like he's in pain.
Speaker 1: And that's, of course the one that she took, and
Speaker 1: it's a great photograph. It became a kind of an icon.
Speaker 1: Who knows how that happened she found him is I
Speaker 1: think the main thing that was going in the pictures.
Speaker 1: She saw this boy in Central Park and she knew
Speaker 1: that she wanted to photograph him because there was something
Speaker 1: she said that reminded him of herself. Was that true
Speaker 1: of many of her photographs, that she saw something in
Speaker 1: her subjects or waited for the something that reminded her
Speaker 1: of herself, of herself, or of somebody who was close
Speaker 1: to hers. So sometimes there were women on the street
Speaker 1: that would remind her of her grandmother, who she said
Speaker 1: was rather vulgar but superb like a witch. And so
Speaker 1: there are a number of older women, normal middle class
Speaker 1: women that she would stop and she would photograph, and
Speaker 1: they would look not normal. One of the things that
Speaker 1: said about Urbace is that she made freaks seem like
Speaker 1: everyday people, and everyday people look like freaks. A great
Speaker 1: example the photo of the quote Jewish giant with his
Speaker 1: parents who are are dwarfed by him standing in the room.
Speaker 1: They're a family, but they are family in turmoil. They're
Speaker 1: a family and conflict. You would think these would be
Speaker 1: parents that be sympathetic and empathetic towards their son, who
Speaker 1: you know, is living with this essentially deformity. But she's
Speaker 1: captured something else. Yes, Now, the Jewish Giant is somebody
Speaker 1: that she knew, Eddie Carmel, his name was. She had
Speaker 1: known him for a long time, so this was a
Speaker 1: relationship that had culminated in this photograph. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot under the iceberg. Before you see the tip. Eddie
Speaker 1: had um acromegaly. I mean he had a form of
Speaker 1: giant is um that would eventually kill him. It's unclear
Speaker 1: how tall he was, but he was let's say roughly
Speaker 1: seven ft tall, and he worked in sideshows, which horrified
Speaker 1: his father, who was a very proper middle class Jewish
Speaker 1: Man who wanted to go back to Israel, where they
Speaker 1: had come from. They come to take care of the
Speaker 1: mother's relative, who then died, but they couldn't leave because
Speaker 1: of Eddie. So the father was angered by Eddie and
Speaker 1: by his choosing to be inside shows to try to
Speaker 1: make a career as a freak. Basically, the mother was
Speaker 1: caught in the middle between her son and her husband.
Speaker 1: So in the picture you see the father looking angry,
Speaker 1: the mother looking helpless, and Eddie can barely fit in
Speaker 1: the space of this low ceiling department. I mean, all
Speaker 1: the details in that picture are amazing, the furniture. And again,
Speaker 1: she doesn't stage this, she just finds it and sees it.
Speaker 1: She's looking at a family because she's really interested in families,
Speaker 1: and she's seeing a dynamic in the family. And if
Speaker 1: she's anyone, of course, she would be Eddie. Because she's
Speaker 1: a child who's not understood by his parents. She feels
Speaker 1: like a freak in many ways. Yes, you don't see
Speaker 1: tremendous love between the parent and the child in this
Speaker 1: in this photo, and yet the freak is dwarfing his parents. Right.
Speaker 1: These kinds of issues, I guess I'll say something. Certainly
Speaker 1: do smack of her family of origin that she wanted
Speaker 1: to and when he and did dwarf her parents? Right?
Speaker 1: But tell us what photographs did she talk about? This? Really?
Speaker 1: This is me I'm in here? Well? The classic one
Speaker 1: is is a picture of a Westchester family on a
Speaker 1: Sunday afternoon and she she found a woman who was
Speaker 1: a friend of a friend of hers. Danne was having
Speaker 1: lunch with this woman. They went to a bookstore and
Speaker 1: the friend greeted this very made up, beautiful blonde woman
Speaker 1: who reminded Danne of her own mother in her attention
Speaker 1: to fashion. And I've got to say, I interviewed this
Speaker 1: woman many years later and she could still remember what
Speaker 1: she was wearing when she met Deanne, so she was
Speaker 1: very interested in fashion. The woman suggested to Deanne that
Speaker 1: Danne might want to come out to their house in
Speaker 1: the summer that a swimming pool, so Danne did. She
Speaker 1: took many photographs, but the one that she kept and
Speaker 1: printed and has become famous shows the two parents on
Speaker 1: chas Long on a Long. Deanne had decided she didn't
Speaker 1: want the swimming pool in the picture, and I think
Speaker 1: that's telling because she didn't want this to be a
Speaker 1: picture about American upper middle class suburban life. She wanted
Speaker 1: it to be something more mythic, as she was saying about,
Speaker 1: you know, other pictures, and and more a universal. In
Speaker 1: the background, there's a little boy. You can't see quite
Speaker 1: what he's doing, but he's involved in his own activity.
Speaker 1: What he's actually doing is feeding his toy duck in
Speaker 1: an inflatable pool, but you don't see the duck. And
Speaker 1: I just know this because I talked to again. He's
Speaker 1: not not a boy anymore, the man now, and Dean
Speaker 1: said it was a family like her own family. She
Speaker 1: also said that it was as if the parents were
Speaker 1: dreaming the boy, and the boy was inventing the parents,
Speaker 1: which I think is also something to do with the
Speaker 1: way she saw her family. But it's positioned as an
Speaker 1: eatable triangle also because the boy is the apex and
Speaker 1: the two parents are side by side. The man looks angry,
Speaker 1: he's got his face covered with his arm. The woman
Speaker 1: looks bored and beautiful and the child is in his
Speaker 1: own world, and I think that is I mean, she said,
Speaker 1: so this was how Dan saw her own childhood when
Speaker 1: she took that picture and when she saw it actually later,
Speaker 1: because in fact there's a gap. She she was ill
Speaker 1: with hepatitis when she took that picture and then she
Speaker 1: just collapsed. But then she printed the negatives and she
Speaker 1: was thrilled with that picture. Let's pause for a break here.
Speaker 1: So she goes through sort of these phases, stages, She
Speaker 1: goes to these areas where transvestites are as, she goes
Speaker 1: to these circus shows. She nurtured certain relationships to get
Speaker 1: certain shots. And by the way she she is being
Speaker 1: recognized for her work. I mean even I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not that it took her to die to be regnized.
Speaker 1: She was definitely recognized in her lifetime. People who knew
Speaker 1: anything about photography very much admired what she was doing.
Speaker 1: So she's interacting with also successful photographers, not that any
Speaker 1: of them are making a lot of money, and in fact,
Speaker 1: she was really was financially struggling as they all were,
Speaker 1: because you know, a museum would pay an enormous amount
Speaker 1: for painting, but pay for her photograph because it wasn't
Speaker 1: recognized in that way. So she is being recognized, but
Speaker 1: she's still continuing to look for new subject matter and
Speaker 1: push her envelope, as it were. At some point she
Speaker 1: is taking photographs of mentally disabled people, homes for women
Speaker 1: who were mentally disabled, and she took a number of photographs.
Speaker 1: There then became this question in terms of her ethics,
Speaker 1: did she get consent from people? Did she get consent
Speaker 1: from people who were capable of giving consent? And you know,
Speaker 1: did she cross a line in terms of being an
Speaker 1: ethical artist end of her career? In her life, she
Speaker 1: did go out to New Jersey and photograph these developmentally
Speaker 1: disabled women. She did not get consent. First of all,
Speaker 1: they weren't capable of giving consent, so that she would
Speaker 1: have had to get it from the guardians. You couldn't
Speaker 1: do this kind of work today. She'd never be allowed
Speaker 1: to um wander around. So the ethics of it, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. People talk about this issue sometimes in
Speaker 1: regard to the developmentally disabled people. Sometimes the question of
Speaker 1: whether she was somehow ridiculing or you know, making fun
Speaker 1: of the people that she photographed. Now, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: in my mind that that is not true of developmentally
Speaker 1: disabled people. She would say often that she loved them.
Speaker 1: And I don't looking at those pictures, see anything other
Speaker 1: than affection and admiration, really, because what's so distinctive about
Speaker 1: those pictures is that she sought out the women who
Speaker 1: looked happy. She wasn't interested in photographing. You know, normally,
Speaker 1: when people Richard Abbotan had done this earlier, when they
Speaker 1: go to these places, they're looking for signs of misery
Speaker 1: and degradation. She was, and I'm sure they were there.
Speaker 1: That was not her intent, and it's not what she photographed.
Speaker 1: She was looking for people who, despite suffering from these
Speaker 1: really grievous disabilities, were happy. That was a big theme
Speaker 1: for her at that stage in her life, because she
Speaker 1: was really not happy and wondered how it was that
Speaker 1: people could be happy. And you know, we talk about
Speaker 1: this because it was such a pressing issue for herself.
Speaker 1: The other pictures, the earlier ones of freaks for instance,
Speaker 1: or or of of people that you know, so called
Speaker 1: normals who who she makes look freakish. There is an
Speaker 1: element of cruelty in these pictures, for sure, and I
Speaker 1: think part of what makes people uncomfortable when they see
Speaker 1: them today, is that they don't know how to feel
Speaker 1: about them because they're not simple pictures, and her attitude
Speaker 1: towards these peoples was not simple. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: she identified with them. On the other hand, she did
Speaker 1: find them ridiculous in a in a way that she
Speaker 1: found aspects of her own self ridiculous. That ambivalence which
Speaker 1: characterizes these pictures of both affection and mockery, I think
Speaker 1: is what she was after. It is, and it's why
Speaker 1: other people can't take pictures like this, because they don't
Speaker 1: have that complexity. She said, a photograph is a secret
Speaker 1: about a secret. The more it tells you less you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is a complated statement right there, But
Speaker 1: the mystery of it and the not knowing was just
Speaker 1: as important to her in terms of what she was
Speaker 1: communicating with these photos. The kind of photograph she took
Speaker 1: particularly was first recording something shared between the photographer and
Speaker 1: the subject, so in a in a way that was
Speaker 1: a secret. But then you have the picture and the
Speaker 1: viewer of the picture, who is him or herself looking
Speaker 1: at this picture and sharing something with it, So it
Speaker 1: is a due will secret. You are communing with something
Speaker 1: on the wall or in a book, and in turn
Speaker 1: that was a communion between the subject and the photographer. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: she continues to have these bouts of it seems ever
Speaker 1: worsening depression. Alan has not only separated, but as you said,
Speaker 1: emotionally left her. He's literally moved to the West Coast,
Speaker 1: which was devastating for her to be with somebody else.
Speaker 1: She becomes involved, as you mentioned earlier, with Marvin Israel,
Speaker 1: a very highly successful really artist but one who developed
Speaker 1: other artists, and he is incredibly supportive of her work
Speaker 1: and and in fact formative in terms of talking with
Speaker 1: her about her work and what she should be doing
Speaker 1: or could be doing. She is sexually involved with him,
Speaker 1: but he has married. He will not leave his wife,
Speaker 1: and this is very difficult for her because he's essentially
Speaker 1: not really available, even though he's in and out. Yes,
Speaker 1: these two most important men in her life, Alan Arbis
Speaker 1: and Marvin Israel are in a way opposite polls um.
Speaker 1: Alan doesn't really divorce himself emotionally from Deane. In fact,
Speaker 1: their closeness continues right up until her death. Marvin, whom
Speaker 1: she was involved with for ten years, is a much
Speaker 1: different kind of person. He's pushing her to transgress actually,
Speaker 1: and as you say, he was married to another psychologically
Speaker 1: fragile artist who also had periods of of not leaving
Speaker 1: the house. So Marvin's first allegiance was to Margie, his wife,
Speaker 1: And this became increasingly painful for d m because, as
Speaker 1: you say, he was not available to her when she
Speaker 1: felt that she needed him, and she and she became
Speaker 1: needier and needier. And in addition, some sort of relationship
Speaker 1: went on between her daughter Dune and Marvin Israel. Yes,
Speaker 1: so again we don't know precisely how that affected Deanne.
Speaker 1: It seems at least plausible to me that Deanne was
Speaker 1: involved in engineering this relationship. But friends of Deanne's told
Speaker 1: me that they felt that even if she had helped
Speaker 1: engineer this relationship, a sexual relationship, a sexual relationship between
Speaker 1: her lover and her daughter, that it proved to be
Speaker 1: much more painful to her than she might have anticipated,
Speaker 1: in the way that she wouldn't have anticipated the pain
Speaker 1: that would be caused by Alan's departure to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: And she was a woman in her late forties, she'd
Speaker 1: had two serious bouts with hepatitis, she was definitely looking older.
Speaker 1: She was always somebody who looked quite young, as in
Speaker 1: the power to seduce in her mind at least may
Speaker 1: have been being diminished by these physical frailties, as evidenced
Speaker 1: perhaps to her of Alan moving to California and Marvin
Speaker 1: staying at the end of the day with his wife
Speaker 1: and even being willing to get sexually involved with the
Speaker 1: daughter who would be than just a younger version of Diane.
Speaker 1: But I think it was more that she just knew
Speaker 1: that she was not his first priority. That is what
Speaker 1: aided her that there was another woman who took precedence
Speaker 1: over her. Richard Avidan had a big show in Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: and um Marvin, who was very close to Avidant, designed
Speaker 1: the show. Margie didn't go with Marvin for that opening,
Speaker 1: so he went with Dianne. So she was for once
Speaker 1: like the wife. I mean, they could spend the night together.
Speaker 1: They you know, they could share you know, the hotel room.
Speaker 1: And it was after that coming back to New York
Speaker 1: and once again being the other woman, the other woman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that launched her long and final depression. Her final depression
Speaker 1: obviously a severe depression. It seemed almost as though she
Speaker 1: were actually even no longer excited about taking photographs. I
Speaker 1: mean that her work wasn't stimulating her. These relationships or
Speaker 1: lack thereof, certainly also impacting her mood. She was aware
Speaker 1: and expressed being aware that ending her life would raise
Speaker 1: her profile, would probably raise the value of her work.
Speaker 1: There was this vicious circle. She was depressed, she could
Speaker 1: no longer photograph people who were looking back at her,
Speaker 1: and she had taken strength from that reciprocal gaze. So
Speaker 1: as she got more depressed, she was photographing people like
Speaker 1: those developmentally disabled women who did look back at her,
Speaker 1: but it was not the kind of look that you
Speaker 1: could get sustenance from. She became interested in photographing perhaps
Speaker 1: sleeping people. She photographed blind people. It's fascinating to me
Speaker 1: to see that she was looking for subject that couldn't
Speaker 1: look back at her. At this point, she did a
Speaker 1: photograph of an empty movie theater, so she had done
Speaker 1: something at the very beginning of her career when she
Speaker 1: quit the fashion business, also photographing newspapers blowing down the street,
Speaker 1: and now she returned to that desolation. Right around this time,
Speaker 1: Form put her on the cover. They've never done anything
Speaker 1: on a photographer before at all, and they put her
Speaker 1: on the cover of the magazine and at the same
Speaker 1: time the curator of the American pavilion in Venice at
Speaker 1: the Venice Bionale, and he wanted to include Dianne in
Speaker 1: that exhibition, which had not been done with a photographer before,
Speaker 1: and all of this made her extremely anxious. She complained
Speaker 1: about this also to her psychiatrists. You know that that
Speaker 1: people want things from her that she can't give them.
Speaker 1: So this death by suicide was not a gesture. This
Speaker 1: was planned when no one would be around, when no
Speaker 1: one would find her. She marks in her journal a
Speaker 1: reference to her last supper and takes barbiturous slits her wrists,
Speaker 1: gets in a bathtub and is not found for two days.
Speaker 1: Marvin is the one who discovered the body, and she
Speaker 1: knew that Marvin would discover the body because he had
Speaker 1: a key to her apartment in Westbeth here in Greenwich Village. Um.
Speaker 1: So last supper I've interpreted to refer to two things.
Speaker 1: One is that she did take barbarite ruth and slash
Speaker 1: her wrist. So it is a little bit like Christ saying,
Speaker 1: this is my body and this is my blood, and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a kind of communion of wafer and wine.
Speaker 1: Also at the Last Supper, Jesus also said one of
Speaker 1: those closest to him would betray him, and so I
Speaker 1: think she did feel betrayed by Marvin in various ways,
Speaker 1: but but primarily that he wasn't there for her. There
Speaker 1: are many things contributing to Diane's depression, but I think
Speaker 1: that that note Last Supper suggests that the thing at
Speaker 1: the top of her mind was this sense of betrayal
Speaker 1: by Marvin. Deanne's work was instrumental in changing how we've
Speaker 1: recognized photography as an art form, something that we should
Speaker 1: understand at a more creatively complex level than merely the
Speaker 1: taking of a picture. Like everything, I think she was
Speaker 1: very ambivalent about her fame. She did want recognition, that's
Speaker 1: for sure, and she did get it after her suicide.
Speaker 1: The show at the Museum of Modern Art that was
Speaker 1: done as a memorial retrospective was incredibly well attended to.
Speaker 1: People were lined up in the street to get in
Speaker 1: and it was a huge phenomenon. There have been previous photographers,
Speaker 1: for sure, you know, people like Walker Evans who had
Speaker 1: had one man exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art,
Speaker 1: and others Ansel Adams who were um revered Arbists did
Speaker 1: a couple of things, I mean one that that had
Speaker 1: not been done before. Perhaps she reached a much wider
Speaker 1: audience because the pictures had a psychological power to them
Speaker 1: that made them riveting. So people who weren't otherwise interested
Speaker 1: in photography would be transfixed by these pictures and have
Speaker 1: powerful reactions to them. Even Walker Evans and Ansel Adams,
Speaker 1: they were great photographers, but but you don't have that
Speaker 1: immediacy of feeling that you do in front of an
Speaker 1: Arbist picture, which I argue is enhanced or in part
Speaker 1: created by the formal ingenuity and an artistry that is
Speaker 1: also in those pictures. They almost sucker punch you you
Speaker 1: don't expect. The more time you spend with them, the
Speaker 1: more you see in them. Other people can't take pictures
Speaker 1: like this because they don't have that complexity. John Sarkowski
Speaker 1: was the director of the photography department of Museum of
Speaker 1: Modern Art. He said after d N's death, when she
Speaker 1: suddenly became very famous, people would come in every week
Speaker 1: with pictures that they had taken of people up against
Speaker 1: the wall, thinking that they were, you know, these close
Speaker 1: ups of people that they would be like Dan Rbs
Speaker 1: but they were not like Dan's pictures and people couldn't
Speaker 1: do that. It was her, so I think yes what happened.
Speaker 1: Very soon after her death, the art market for photography
Speaker 1: develops and people now see these photographs as being art
Speaker 1: and being perhaps on the same level as painting and sculpture,
Speaker 1: a creative genius. Well, that wraps things up for this episode.
Speaker 1: A huge thanks to Arthur Lubao. For more on Deanne
Speaker 1: Arbyce's life and work, check out his book Deanne Arvis
Speaker 1: Portrait of Photographer. Also, if you're interested in more information
Speaker 1: about the people we discussed in this series, you can
Speaker 1: check out my book The Power of Different and make
Speaker 1: sure to follow me on Twitter at Dr Gayl Salts
Speaker 1: or at Personalogy MD What We Feels. That's why I
Speaker 1: play some metald Lollo join Home. It's just because I'm
Speaker 1: going home to have my suffer revived because I won't
Speaker 1: be there long for. Personalogy is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. The executive producers are Dr Gayl Saltz and
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The associate
Speaker 1: producer is Lowell Berlanti. Editing music and mixing by Lowell Berlante.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: T