Friday, November 1, 2013

Diane Arbus, Untitled (Marcella Matthaei), 1969


“All families are creepy in a way,” Arbus wrote to a friend in 1968.

(Awesomely: "The only recollection I have of her is that I mistakenly thought she was Joan Baez," says Marcella, who lives in Florida now and describes herself as a part-time writer and part-time construction worker. "She was slender and pretty and my father had a Joan Baez album. I thought it was her.") 

(I don't know why I love this photo so much, really. It reminds me a bit of Munch's girl in "Puberty," altho the two artworks are really different. But that same gaze, that same no-bullshit engaging with the viewer.)