Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs

In late 1969, Diane Arbus began to work on a portfolio. She completed the printing for eight known sets of A box of ten photographs, as she titled it, only four of which she sold during her lifetime. Two were purchased by Richard Avedon; another by Jasper Johns. The last of the four was purchased by Bea Feitler, art director at Harper’s Bazaar. Arbus signed and titled the prints in all four sets, and each print was accompanied by an overlying vellum sheet inscribed with an extended caption. For Feitler, Arbus added an eleventh photograph. This is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on A box of ten photographs, using the eleven print set that Arbus assembled specially for Feitler. It was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1986, and is the only one of the portfolios completed and sold by Arbus that is publicly held.

This exhibition traces the history of A box of ten photographs between 1969 and 1973. The story is a crucial one because it was the portfolio that established the foundation for Arbus’s posthumous career. After his encounter with Arbus and the portfolio, Philip Leider, then editor-in-chief of Artforum and a photography skeptic, admitted, “With Diane Arbus, one could find oneself interested in photography or not, but one could no longer. . . deny its status as art. . . What changed everything was the portfolio itself.” In May 1971, Arbus was the first photographer to be featured in Artforum, which also showcased her work on its cover. Leider’s admission of Arbus into this critical bastion of late modernism was instrumental in shifting the perception of photography and ushering its acceptance into the realm of “serious” art.

In June 1972, the portfolio was sent to Venice, where, in another pioneering breakthrough, Arbus was the first photographer included in a Biennale, at that time the premiere international showcase for contemporary artists. There Hilton Kramer, writing for the New York Times, declared it a sensation. Its story also coincides with that of SAAM, for it was this museum that organized the American contribution to the Biennale, thereby playing an important early role in Arbus’s legacy. Much has followed in essays, books, and exhibitions that interpret and expand her oeuvre, but only A box of ten photographs was completed by Arbus herself, and it alone offers an unmediated self-reflection on her work.

A black and white photograph by Diane Arbus titled "Mrs. Gladys 'Mitzi' Ulrich with the baby, Sam, a stump-tailed macaque monkey"
Diane Arbus, Mrs. Gladys 'Mitzi' Ulrich with the baby, Sam, a stump-tailed macaque monkey, North Bergen N.J., 1971, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.

Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs forges new ground, focusing on the missing piece from Arbus’s biography that was of central importance to her career. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, co-published with the Aperture Foundation, featuring facsimile reproductions of the prints and the vellums with Arbus’s inscriptions. An in-depth essay by John Jacob, SAAM’s McEvoy Family Curator for Photography, presents new and compelling scholarship correcting errors by Arbus’s biographers and adding significant detail to the period between her death in 1971 and the 1972 posthumous retrospective at MoMA. The forthcoming book establishes that, during this important period, it was A box of ten photographs that conveyed the essence of Diane Arbus to the world.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website