Diane Arbus

King and Queen of a Senior Citizens dance, NYC, 1970

     Diane Arbus is by far my all time favorite photographer. I first saw this image a couple years ago, and I was instantly drawn to her perspective of individuals in a society. Arbus captures the essence of individualism in each one of her photographs and made it her goal to travel around and bring witness to "deviant and marginal"people. Her subjects include dwarfs, giants, transexuals, twins, circus performers, nudist, etc. The images are raw which brings reality into them. I am drawn to her photographs because of the unique and eerie feel they bring to me. Her photos are not emotionless. They are emotion empowered. I think the purpose of a photograph is evoke emotion in the audience, and Arbus is the epitome of that. Her images put together make up a society of outcasts. 

James Natcheway

Somalia 1992- Child starved by famine, a man made weapon of mass extermination.

     When I first saw this photo, my heart sunk. The position of the child shows his every bone and how fragile he is. You can see the poverty of the environment by its architecture, lack of shoes, lack of clothes, and also the state of this little boy. I think that the composition of this photo is excellent. It shows just the right amount of environment, while still having the starving boy as the main subject. The man in the back with the gun also gives information about the security and state of fear that people are forced to live in. 

     The series that Natcheway put together is eye opening and heart jerker. When looking at the photos all together you can't believe that this is going on around the world. It angers and saddens me to look at these photos of children starving to death. Parents always tell you there are starving children in Africa. When you look at these photos, especially together, they are visualizing facts. These types of photos are extremely important to societies, especially ones that do not witness poverty on a daily basis. 

     

Mary Ellen Mark

   
     This image is from Mary Ellen Mark's body of work called Ward 81. After working on the set of "One flew over the cuckoos nest" Mark found this ward. It took her over a year and a lot of persistence to be able to go and photograph the patients. She focused on capturing the patient as who where, not what they where. Mark did not photograph their illness's, she focused her camera on what the person was doing. When she first started this body of work she was afraid that the patients would "reject her".  I was drawn to this specific photo because of the eeriness I felt when I first looked at it. Without knowing that the photo was taken in a ward, it is easy to conclude that. This women's emotion and position in bed makes her look insane and put away. When looking at this series together, it evokes emotions and almost freight. Im not frightened by the actual pictures themselves, but imagining taking the photo. These photos are powerful. The emotions are raw.