I'm reading On Photography by Susan Sontag at the minute (see Bibliography), and one of her chapters focuses on Diane Arbus. Arbus is another photographer that I keep coming across, but I haven't really been drawn to her photography and the way it's described so far. However I thought I should spend some more time looking at her photographs.
In comparison with the way in which Sontag describes the pictures I was struck by how tame they were. Maybe it just shows how influential her work is that in the past 30 years these image and the focus of photography on "the other"' on the edge, the periphery, the abnormal, the taboo, the obscene, has meant that these images of Arbus no longer shock like they perhaps once did.
Either way, the images (and those that now follow the same vein), are largely uninteresting to me. I'm far more interested in images which capture the norm (and probably not that interested in portraiture to be honest).
I found an interesting quote from Arbus where she describes how she takes photos as an excuse to get near to people who intrigue her. Again, I found this interesting, as it differs greatly from why I'm interested in photography - not as a means to get access to something which would otherwise be unavailable, but as a way to see what I already know in as tangible a way as possible, or to see it in a different light, as I've never noticed it before.
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