We practiced a lot when we were in Personal Effects. Margaret Explosion, on the other hand, never practices. Our old rehearsal space had a Diane Arbus poster on the wall with a large reproduction of “A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, NYC 1966.” I like to think she had an influence on the band.
The Met Breuer, the old Whitney, has mounted a show of her early work. Called, “In the Beginning,” it features a hundred photos from 1956 to 1962, work that’s not been seen for the most part. The museum notes she was influenced by the great August Sandler and they displayed one of his photos at the beginning of the show and then her “Sunday Outing” photo at the end of the show.
The ingenious way the curator hung the Diane Arbus show, with narrow grey columns displaying one of her relatively small photos on each side, draws you in to each photo but leaves you surrounded by people, people as strange as the ones she photographed.
