Diane Arbus

As for hours spent outside the classroom, I had the opportunity to research and write a paper on Diane Arbus' life and work. I focused on one picture in particular- Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park.

For some reason, I find this photograph to be very disturbing yet very interesting at the same time. In my paper I discussed the point of “punctum” for me within the picture. To me, his little curled up hand causes something within me to wince. I went on to say that I believed this boy had some sort of disorder and was probably running around Central Park in a mad rage. Something I learned from this project was that Arbus, yes, Diane Arbus, had to take a few bad photos before she got to this one… In the pictures below, it seems that it took Diane a while before she got “the shot”. That is encouraging to me because when I went out the other day, I felt like only 2 or 3 of my 30+ photos turned out. It just goes to show that even the best of the best have to practice and learn from their mistakes in order to get a picture that is worthwhile.