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Artist or Maker: Diane Arbus (1923-1971)

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Description: BOY WITH STRAW HAT WAITING TO MARCH IN A POST-WAR PARADE, 1967
gelatin silver print
Sheet: 14 x 11 in. (35.5 x 28 cm.)
Image: 10 1/4 x 10 in. (26 x 25.4 cm.)

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Provenance: Pace/MacGill, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

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Exhibited: New York, Museum of Modern Art, Ben Schultz Memorial Collection, February-March 1968 (another example exhibited).
; 'Contemporary Photographs I,' Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 15 April - 16 May 1971; Venice Biennale 1972, (The Box of Ten was exhibited); I don't have absolute confirmation yet but I think it was in the 1972 exhibition at MoMA: 'Diane Arbus,' Museum of Modern Art, New York, 7 November 1972 - 21 January 1973; 'Floods of Light: Flash Photography, 1851-1981,' London, The Photographer's Gallery, 10 December 1982 - 29 January 1983; 'Diane Arbus Revelations,' San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 25 October 2003 - 8 February 2004 and travelled subsequently

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Published: D. Arbus, A Box of Ten Photographs, New York, 1970 (illustrated). D. Pratt, Contemporary Photographs I, Cambridge, 1971 (illustrated).
Aperature, Diane Arbus, Millerton, 1972, n.p. (illustrated).
Time-Life Books, Documentary Photography, New York, 1972, p. 207 (illustrated).
J. Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs, New York, 1973, p. 207 (illustrated).
D. Arbus, "Five Photographs by Diane Arbus," Artforum, May 1974, (illustrated on the front cover).
Diane Arbus Revelations, New York, 2003, pp. 87 and 188 (illustrated).

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Notes: BOY WITH A STRAW HAT WAITING TO MARCH IN A PRO-WAR PARADE N.Y.C. 1967 is considered to be one of Diane Arbus' seminal images. She included the photograph in her only portfolio A BOX OF TEN PHOTOGRAPHS, comprised of ten images which she felt best represented her oeuvre, and which she created shortly before her death by suicide in July of 1971.

In May of the same year, BOY WITH A STRAW HAT WAITING TO MARCH IN A PRO-WAR PARADE N.Y.C. 1967 was chosen to be featured on the cover of Artforum magazine due to its social and political zeitgeist. An additional five images from the portfolio were reproduced inside as a picture story with the title "Five photographs by Diane Arbus." The following is an excerpt from Arbus's text that accompanied the photographs:

"Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize. Nothing is ever alike. The best thing is the difference. I get to keep what nobody needs. A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." (As quoted in Artforum, May 1971).