BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 7.25 x 9.5 in. / 100 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 3/24/2015
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2015 p. 109

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781881337416 TRADE
List Price: $29.95 CDN $39.95 GBP £27.00

AVAILABILITY
Out of stock

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FRAENKEL GALLERY

Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus & Howard Nemerov

By Alexander Nemerov.

Silent Dialogues, by art historian Alexander Nemerov, is a probing, intimate reflection about photographer Diane Arbus, the author's aunt, and her brother, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Howard Nemerov, the author's father. "I have no memories of Diane Arbus," begins Alexander Nemerov in the first of two meditative essays that comprise this book. "A Resemblance" examines Howard Nemerov's complicated responses to his sister's photography. "The School" focuses on a body of Arbus' work known as the Untitled series, photographs made at residences for the mentally disabled between 1969 and 1971, in the last years of her life. Through their work, the author explores the siblings' disparate and distinct sensibilities, and in doing so uncovers signs of an unexpected aesthetic kinship. Illustrations complementing the essays include numerous examples of Arbus' photographs; paintings by artists as diverse as Pieter Brueghel, Norman Rockwell, Paul Feeley and Johannes Vermeer; and a selection of poems by Howard Nemerov, chosen by his son.

"Untitled (7)" (1970-71) is reproduced from Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus & Howard Nemerov.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Hyperallergic

Larissa Archer

Even if one does not accept the sometimes metaphysical import Nemerov ascribes to the images, the intensity of his examination of them may well guide one not only to look harder at Arbus’s already widely and profoundly scrutinized canon, but at all images. What Nemerov calls “the fanatical quality of attention in poet and photographer,” he himself has in spades, as well as a rich mystical imagination. It’s unlikely that anyone who reads this book will put it down less critical, less observant, or less attentive to the possible, at turns fanciful and profound, relations between things.