Sotheby's: Photographs: Lot 165A
DIANE ARBUS 1923-1971 'WAITRESS IN A NUDIST CAMP, N. J.'
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signed, inscribed 'For Janey and Lou,' and initaled 'D. A.' by the photographer in ink in the margin, signed, titled, and dated by her in ink on the reverse, 1963, printed no later than December 1969
PROVENANCE
Gift of the photographer to the present owner, 1969
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES
Diane Arbus: Revelations, p. 72
CATALOGUE NOTE
This photograph was a gift to Janey Holzman and Louis Klein, Jr., on the occasion of their wedding in December 1969. Janey was the stepdaughter of Edith Arbus Holzman, Allan Arbus's sister.
Arbus took this photograph during a visit to family-oriented Sunshine Park nudist camp in New Jersey in July 1963, her first among several visits made to various nudist colonies over the course of five years. She was able to get permission to make these photographs of nudists only by being naked, too, and had hoped to publish them in a book. This proved impossible when she was unable to get the releases she needed.
For her unpublished article for Esquire, "Notes on the Nudist Camp," a recollection based on all her nudist camp visits, she wrote: 'But most people are not entirely nude. Some ladies wear beach hats or sunglasses or wedgies and curlers or earrings and pocketbooks. In the cafeteria the teenage waitresses wear organdy demi-aprons. Some men have on only a wrist-watch, or shoes and socks with their cigarettes and money tucked into their socks for safekeeping. Sometimes you see someone wearing nothing but a bandaid or a pencil behind their ear or walking a dog on a leash' (Magazine Work, p. 69).
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