The camera is cruel: Model Arbus Goldin

Publisher's description

The three great women photographers Lisette Model, Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin recorded the social life of America which, as a land of immigration, remains to this day a reflection of the wider world, during different phases of the 20th century.

They were interested in the social dimensions of co-existence, in those living on the margins of society, in extraordinary personalities and in the eccentric. With the lenses of their cameras they cast a highly personal glance at people and their disparate living environments as a means of repeatedly questioning the validity of norms and conventions. As representatives of three generations their work is, on the one hand, an expression of their time and the different milieus in which they moved and, on the other hand, a homage to the diversity of existence and its many manifestations.

Although works by Model, Arbus and Goldin have appeared alongside each other in a range of thematic exhibitions this show in the FLATZ Museum Dornbirn and the WestLicht photo gallery, Vienna is the first to bring together a selection of key works in an exclusive joint presentation of the work of the three “grandes dames” of American photographic history.