ABSTRACT
The photography of American Diane Arbus and French American Vivian Maier allows us to explore the putative male gaze that so haunts feminist theory. Arbus's 1966 photograph A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, N. Y. C. showcases her ability to reveal the pain of the misrecognition of the feminine position. Photography has the capacity to show what Arbus calls 'the flaw', referring to the difference between the way a person thinks he appears and the way he really appears. When Arbus took her photograph of the little girl twins in Roselle, the reigning Doublemint twins were Terrie and Jennie Frankel, pretty young girls who dressed identically in the commercials and whose images thus 'doubled the pleasure' of the consumer. To photograph Brenda Duff Frazier, 1938 Debutante of the Year, at home, Boston, Mass, Arbus sought out the former debutante and socialite after Frazier had struggled for years with anorexia, bulimia, alcoholism, and addictions to pills.
