ABSTRACT
If history weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living, it’s only natural that the living try to shake off sleep altogether. There is, to start with, the character constructed to explain how the Diane Arbus who began as the coddled daughter of nouveau riche Jewish parents ended as the Diane Arbus who followed transvestites home to seedy hotels and frequented nudist camps in New Jersey. The story thus moves naturally, the forces of retribution having been deployed after all, it was Diane Arbus who had first been unfaithful to her haunting the subway at all hours, cultivating a 'palpable' erotic rapport with a Mexican dwarf. In Magazine Work both Aperture and the Estate of Diane Arbus provide supporting information about someone already impeccably credentialed as a Great Photographer, It is not in the interest of either party to examine the credentials themselves, much less the mechanisms of certification.
