Victoria Olsen

As I was prepping for my spring semester teaching film students I read an article by Judith Butler on the Diane Arbus retrospective, "Revelations," that toured the country in 2005.  I was impressed by Butler's ability to shift between describing the images and advancing an idea about them (not an easy task, as my students could tell you).  This image was included as an example of one of many Arbus shot of subjects with their eyes closed. It stuck with me.

The photograph is all Arbus: the mingling of human and inhuman, the lack of sentimentality....  But the image is also surprisingly formal, emphasizing the curves of nose and lips. The pallor of the face bleeds into the background (or is it vice versa?) This sameness shows off difference: the subtle texture of the cloth under the chin and the strange pose that pushes the baby's face back and away from us.  Yet the face still fills the frame, pushing against it, round against square.  Butler argues that Arbus's subjects resist the camera: "the figures present an obdurate surface, one that cannot be entered or known."  The push and pull in this baby's presentation demonstrate that quality of Arbus's work: the invitation and the recoil.

Then the really weird part, that Arbus could never have foreseen: according to a website that quotes Patricia Bosworth's biography of Arbus, this baby is Anderson Cooper.