Diane Arbus: 10 Years: Masterworks from the 1960s and 70s

Her brilliant portrait ‘Susan Sontag alone on a bed’ is on my studio wall. I feel grateful for it as Susan Sontag is such a brilliant essayist. And sad that DA could not overcome the demons that did at least influence the way she approached her practice.
 
I see discussion of "demons" and "mental disability". Of course, Arbus had her issues, as do we all. But remember that strong, courageous, creative women have always been considered a threat and deserving of punishment, even more so in the late sixties and early seventies when she did her best work. Her health was not good at the time of her death, and work was drying up despite her recognition by the museum establishment. Perhaps she just got profoundly tired, tired enough to weigh her options and decide not to go on. In my view, sometimes suicide is a valid option. Consider the possibility that the demons were external, and the culture itself profoundly dysfunctional. It can be an overly simplistic explanation to see the result, an individual's suicide, as solely the result of mental illness when the culture itself is mad.
 
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