Furthermore, based on edition numbers of individual prints that have appeared at auction, it is clear that at least fifteen of the portfolios have been broken up and sold separately. The present lot is one of the posthumous editions, unbroken, complete with printed title page and vellum interleaving sheets on which her handwritten titles have been reproduced, and in the original Plexiglas box.Ĭomplete sets of A box of ten photographs rarely come to auction only four are noted in the past twenty years. The artist’s estate then commissioned the completion of Arbus' intended edition of fifty, with prints by Neil Selkirk (for full details, see Selkirk's essay, 'In the Darkroom,' in Diane Arbus Revelations, 2003, pp. Four of those were sold during her lifetime (two to Richard Avedon one to her friend, art director Bea Feitler and one to Jasper Johns), and the other four were set aside as artist's proofs. Available from Diane Arbus, four sixty-three West Street, New York City, for one thousand dollars.'Īt the time of her death in 1971, Arbus had completed the printing of eight sets of the portfolio.

By December of 1970, she had made a flyer for the portfolio which included two strips of contact prints of ten images and the following typewritten text: 'there is a portfolio of ten photographs by Diane Arbus dating from nineteen sixty-two to nineteen seventy in an edition of fifty, printed, signed, numbered, annotated by the photographer, sixteen by twenty inches in a nearly invisible box which is also a frame, designed by Marvin Israel. In 1969, Diane Arbus began working on a portfolio of her work, to be issued in an edition of fifty, and offered for sale. Yetta Granat is 72 and Charles Fahrer is 79. They were just chosen King and Queen of a senior citizens dance in N.Y.C. Lauro Morales, a mexican dwarf in his hotel room in N.Y.C., 1970Ī family on the lawn one Sunday in Westchester in June, 1968 Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning in N.J., 1963 On the television set are framed photographs of each other.

Patriotic boy with straw hat, buttons and flag, waiting to march in a pro-war parade, NYC, 1967

Xmas tree in living room in Levittown, N.Y., 1962 This is Eddie Carmel, a jewish giant, with his parents in the living room of their home in the Bronx, N.Y., 1970 Identical twins, Cathleen (l.) and Colleen, members of a twin club in New Jersey, 1966Ī young man in curlers dressing for an annual drag ball, N.Y.C., 1966Ī young family in Brooklyn going for a Sunday outing.

Diane Arbus by Marvin Israel