Susan Sontag's "America Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" Focus- Diane Arbus

Susan Sontag's article "America Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" is a unique look into the perception of the "dark" side of America. She starts off focusing on Walt Whitman's work and his ability to undress the polished side of life that we prefer to see. This serves her motives to highlight the fact that by looking into, or at the other, darker side of life. Where the filth and the freaks reside that we can and are forced to take a more surreal stock of where we are as a society.

Sontag's deliberate focus on what she refers to as "Whitmanesque" attributes in art are her catalyst to underscore her perception of what is true, raw, real photography. To her true photography embodied these Whitmanesque attributes that challenged what is beautiful and put all things in the world into that realm that affords them the opportunity to be seen as beautiful.

After establishing her perceptions of what she believed to be true art in photography, she turns her focus to photographer Diane Arbus. Arbus's photographs were definitely unique for the period. She focused on the unusual, or freaky as some (especially Sontag) saw it. Arbus herself stated that when "you see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw." That flaw is defiantly present in her photographs. However in those same photographs you are able to see not the flaw, but the beauty of the flawed subject. Surely this is what attracted Sontag to Arbus's work and served as the corollary with her work and Whitman's.


In these two photographs by Arbus it is easy to see what Sontag means by "the mystery of Arbus's photographs lies in what they suggest about how the subjects feel." In both photographs you get a straight on look at the subject. With the "Mexican" you see a dwarf head on, in your face. However you also see past the uneasiness of that handicap. You see deeper into his life as a person, embodied by his posture, smile, and the comfort which he has with himself. Conversely in the other photograph you have a mother and daughter in an embrace. An image that in not foreign to us, but the feeling and mood of it screams uncomfortablility. There is nothing in the photo that stands out as a physical handicap. Instead the uneasiness is seen through the eyes of the subjects. You can see pain, fear, worry, and a yearning for hope. All together the photo works to take the pair who are clad with the Christian cross on each and a wedding band on the mother, and makes the viewer struggle with the question of what is wrong with them.
The feeling of Arbus's work is what makes it stand out. No matter the subject, Arbus's didn't toy around with emotion or iconography. She let it show as is, untouched. A true gift. A gift that allows us as citizens to embrace and understand that this country has a dark side that we all to often either forget or choose to ignore. Regardless I feel that this is a global case that we as viewers and benefactors of the arts, have the luxury to contemplate. Much as is those who are freakish or scarred, have had to contemplate and deal with to get along themselves.