Diane Arbus
Un gigante ebreo con i suoi genitori nella loro casa del Bronx, N.Y.

I have always been puzzled by this section of DeBaser. But what is reviewed here? Any photograph or those that have artistic value? And who establishes this artistic value? The photographer's curriculum? Does reviewing a photograph of a soldier executed by the Vietcong have the same meaning or value as a faded photo of an anonymous ship washed ashore on a beach somewhere? Personally, I believe that art is linked to creation. Not a shot extracted from twelve rolls rapidly fired, not the skill of being in the right place at the right time, no matter how right a war, a famine, a beach after a storm may be. In short, not the simple representation of reality, but the awareness of gradually creating something with one's own mind and hands like a painting, a statue, a book.

For this reason, I consider the work of Diane Arbus to be art, known as the photographer of monsters. The Americans call them freaks (like in the atrocious 1932 film by Tod Browning), sideshow phenomena: dwarfs, giants, human pincushions, sword swallowers, hermaphrodites, beings transformed by nature or themselves. Diane's problem was that she couldn't disconnect from her subjects and despite being a beautiful woman (slim, with short black hair, often in black leather pants) she felt internally part of this atrocious world, of having a traumatic experience within her like those monsters who were already born with their trauma, while "normal" people go through life dreading having to face it at some point. Diane considered herself a maladjusted monster in this society, enough to take her own life in 1971.

Let's take her most impressive photo for me: "A Jewish giant with his parents in their home in the Bronx, N.Y." Diane spent eight years visiting Eddie Carmel's family, a 2.4 meters tall giant who had to walk hunched over using a cane due to a bone disease. For Diane, that was the ideal family for a story she synthesized in this photo taken one summer in 1970. It's a very ambiguous photo that manages to go beyond the relationship that might have been in that house. In the small apartment, the giant towers over the parents, and Papa Carmel almost quietly tries to step aside, shielding himself behind Mama Carmel's body, while she looks at the great Eddie with an expression halfway between tenderness for her son and the innate terror that every woman carries within: the fear of having a deformed child, a monster. Diane manages to convey this, and it took eight years, not a lucky shot.