Five images by Diane Arbus that have never been seen before by the public will be exhibited at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York in November, inaugurating the gallery’s new collaboration with the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco in representing the Arbus estate.
The photographs will appear as a part of the first complete presentation of Arbus’s “Untitled” series, the last body of work she created before her death in 1971. “Untitled” is composed of 65 images made at residences for the developmentally disabled from 1969 to 1971. The exhibition will open on Nov. 2.
“I feel this body of work is as radical now as it must have been in the early ’70s,” David Zwirner said in an interview on Wednesday. “They’re so personal. They’re so difficult to look at to this day.”
“They’re so warm, on the one hand, and so devastating, on the other,” he added. “The emotional range she expresses is extraordinary.”
Thirteen images from the “Untitled” series appeared in a 1972 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. An exhibition in 2003 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art called “Diane Arbus: Revelations” also included selections from the series, and a book of photographs from “Untitled” was released in 1995 by Aperture, but does not contain the full series.
Jeffrey Fraenkel, the owner of the Fraenkel Gallery, explained that the collaboration with the David Zwirner Gallery was born out of a desire to make sure that Arbus is appreciated outside of photography circles. “Her work, from the beginning, has certainly reached outside of the realm of capital-P photography, but there’s still work to do,” he said by phone.