First published in 1972, a year after the artist’s death by suicide, this volume is a collection of 80 photographs she took between 1962 and 1971. Referring to herself as “an anthropologist of sorts,” Arbus chose archetypes as subjects, everything from the conventional to the marginal: teenagers, suburbanites, infants, dwarfs, drag queens, nudists. Possessed of an unflinching ability to see the unexpected in the familiar and the familiar in the freakish, Arbus created portraists—raw, unsettling, gentle and sympathetic—that became collaborative, silent dialogues between herself and her subjects. For all their documentary-like clarity and starkness (she frequently shot with a strobe), the photos consistently confirm that their thrust is internal, not external, private rather than social; to quote the artist, “a little bit like walking into an hallucination without being quite sure whose it is.” The introduction, edited from tape recordings of classes she gave in 1971 as well as from interviews and her writings, provides an excellent insight into Arbus’ thoughts on the art of photography and her intentions within that form. MDG

Publisher: Aperture
Paperback: 136 pages
Illustrated

Mann is famous for nude photographs of her disconcertingly gorgeous brood. On the cover of this collection stand her three bare-chested children in a line, two little girls and a boy, proudly flaunting their infantile sexuality/sexiness while unsmilingly staring you down. Inside are pictures of them rolling around in the grass, in the mud or on sheets on which they’ve just pissed. In one photo, a girl, seen from above, is splayed on the ground in a swastika-like pose that’s so twisted she looks like a rape-murder victim—if only for a moment. The clothes come on and off. Mostly the kids are part-naked, their smooth, undefined bodies either ultrawhite or provocatively sullied. Blood, mud or shit, when applied to body or face with even the smallest amount of intent, grant the recipient a Lord of the Flies-type aura. These kids are all so self-possessed, almost aggressive, never smiling, eyes closed in sensual rapture or fixed straight ahead, at the camera, at you, as if to say—what? JT

Publisher: Aperture
Hardback: 88 pages
Illustrated