Diane Arbus
A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y.

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© Estate of Diane Arbus

A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y.
Image Not Available for A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y.
ArtistAmerican, 1923–1971
PrinterAmerican, born England, 1947
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y.
  • This is Eddie Carmel, a Jewish giant, with his parents in their living room of their home in the Bronx N.Y.
  • from the portfolio A box of ten photographs
Date1970, printed 1973
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 14 3/4 × 14 11/16 in. (37.5 × 37.3 cm)
Sheet: 19 7/8 x 16 in. (50.5 x 40.6 cm)
Credit LineThe Gay Block Collection, museum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund and gift of Gay Block
Object number2018.586
Not on view

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Department
Photography
Object Type
Description


Diane Arbus’s honest and intimate photographs of people on the margins of society reveal what was extraordinary in the familiar and what was familiar in the extraordinary. Her portraits—straightforward in their technique, highly personal in their choice of subject, and collaborative in their approach— proved to be immediately and profoundly influential on subsequent photography. Already by November 1972, when a posthumous retrospective of Arbus’s work opened at the Museum of Modern Art, Robert Hughes declared in Time that her work “has had such an influence on other photographers that it is hard to remember how original it was.” The portfolio “a box of ten photographs,” conceived and assembled in 1969–71, is Arbus’s first and only distillation of her mature work, containing some of her most iconic images made between 1962 and 1970.



ProvenanceEstate of the artist; [consigned to Witkin Gallery, New York]; [purchased by Harry Lunn, 1972]; [purchased by Jo Tartt, Washington, D.C., late 1970s]; purchased by Gay Block, Houston, 1986; purchased by MFAH, 2018.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Stamped in black ink, verso, top left: Not to be reproduced in any way without // written permission from Doon Arbus.
Stamped in black ink, verso, top center: This print is part of a limited edition portfolio of // ten Diane Arbus photographs. 8/50 [edition number inscribed in blue ink]
Printed and inscribed on applied label, verso, top right: A diane arbus photograph // title A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx // date n.y. 1970 // print by Neil Selkirk, 1973 // Doon Arbus [signed]
Inscribed in pencil, verso, bottom right upside down: 7 11 sec [?] // 2 mi [?]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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