Amy Arbus ON THE STREET at Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts October 10-November 22, 2020 by Frank Ward
Forty years ago, a time before cameras were a must-have daily accessory, Amy Arbus became the first professional street-style photographer. The now defunct Village Voice newspaper assigned Arbus to photograph for a new fashion column. Their only request was to photograph “anyone who makes you turn your head.” Arbus was well prepared for the project. She had grown up in Greenwich Village with photographer parents, had studied photography in Boston, at the Museum of Fine Arts, and knew that the sidewalks of New York offered a choice picture-making environment. Arbus embarked on what was to become an historic project with full attention to each individual she photographed; she created portraits with distinction and humor. Her ability to elicit engaging gestures and expressions for her portraits seems to be in her DNA.
The irresistible attraction of Arbus’ On the Street project rests in each picture’s whimsicality. In a 1999 interview with John Paul Caponigro, Arbus talks about her initial contact with her subjects. “I felt that my subjects and I were engaging in a little game. I would go up to them and I would say, ‘Can I photograph you? I’m doing a style page for the Village Voice.’ But what I was really saying to them in my heart was, ‘Do you want to play a game with me?’ And they’d say, ‘Sure, that sounds fun.’ We had something to do together. It took the awkwardness of meeting a stranger away. I could go to a party and feel completely intimidated, and I wouldn’t talk to anyone. But if I was out walking on the street, I could talk to anyone; all I needed was a camera.”
The strutters and strivers who inhabited Lower Manhattan’s creative arts scene went about their daily lives dressed for impact. They were born to be seen. Arbus’ subjects were expressing themselves in public with the hope of being discovered. Today, being photographed during one’s daily routine is a common social media activity. Anyone with an ego publishes pictures online on a habitual basis. If someone wants to be famous, they join Instagram, start blogging and attempt to secure a huge number of “likes” on their social platform. However, the daily pictures we see on social media are usually self-made, rarely the photography of a discerning talent such as Amy Arbus.
On the Street tells a story that is more than the sum of 500 pictures and 10 years of monthly publication. Each individual picture is a treasure. In British Flag Shirt, 1983, the subject’s expression floats in the dark, stopping time. The textures apparent in the zebra wall behind The Black and White Dress, 1981, are their own reward. Moccasins, 1982, is a nod to aging in place and when to stop wearing tight pants. Julio Q, 1985, is a beautiful composition of fabric and folds, and a sad remembrance of Julio, who died of AIDS a short while after the photo was taken.
Arbus helped mythologize the American street. She transformed Lower Manhattan into an open studio for making iconic photographic art. A masterful street-style photographer in a neighborhood of fashion-forward creatives was an historic pairing. Arbus told the Voice’s Katrina Szish in 2015, “I was documenting a time that doesn’t exist anymore and a kind of freedom that doesn’t exist anymore. The world is such a different place.” Well, not totally different. Today, New York City streets are known as a consummate catwalk. In 2018, Arbus told Vetle Egeland from Document Journal, “I think it is happening again. People are not afraid to be different, to celebrate being different. There’s some sort of irony that I haven’t figured out. The more repressed our society is getting because of who’s in power, it ends up forcing people to come out and protest and be different and make statements.”
Frank Ward is a photo educator and photographer. In the 1990s he studied with Amy Arbus at the Center for Photography in Woodstock, NY. He is a retired Professor of Art at Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, MA. He currently writes for ZEKE The Magazine of Global Documentary.