PICTURES OF A LIFETIME LACMA'S DIANE ARBUS EXHIBIT OFFERS NEW INSIGHT.

Byline: Steven Rosen Correspondent

`DIANE ARBUS Revelations'' at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art sets a high standard for photography exhibitions.

It is, of course, about her work - which it presents thoroughly and beautifully. But it also provides such sensitive, emphatic entry into the photographer's life that one feels the presence of Arbus herself - on assignments, in her studio, and even alone as she confides to her journals. The exhibit does this through its presentation of poignant archival material, displayed in reconstructions of her library and work areas.

Arbus' work can be unnerving, since she unflinchingly and defiantly photographed societal outsiders during a time, the 1960s, when the moral legitimacy of sciety's insiders was being challenged. Her work is ``alternative portraiture.'' The poor, the elderly, circus freaks, transvestites, nudists, demonstrators, the uncool of all ages and genders pose and stare as if they had commissioned her with their excess wealth. Her work was democratic and inclusive but not superficially celebratory.

The show, at LACMA through May 31, was organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator Sandra Phillips and guest curator Elisabeth Sussman, with the assistance of Arbus' estate. It's the most complete presentation of her work ever, and the first major retrospective since 1972. (Arbus committed suicide in 1971.)

More than 180 of Arbus' black-and-white photographs hang, spaciously mounted, on the subdued gray walls of the Hammer Building. The gallery rooms seem hallowed, like a memorial. And the quality of these prints - several struck after her death by her assistant, Neil Selkirk - uncovers new revelations.

Photography buffs may think they're already familiar with Arbus' most iconic works, such as ``Identical twins, Roselle, N.J.'' (1967), ``A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C.'' (1966), ``Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C.'' (1963) and ``A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx'' (1970). But the clarity of these prints and the elegant framing and display bring out subtle details.

For instance, a print that at first seems like an ironic portrait of a conservative middle-age man, standing by a trash bin and patriotically holding his hat over his heart at a Fifth Avenue parade, gains in meaning here. One can see the slight stains on his raincoat. Is he homeless or alone? He's a lost soul, perhaps - and Arbus' 1969 photo is reaching out toward him as much as it is deriding him.

Phillips wrote that Arbus ``found the people she photographed challenging and intriguing, and they were similarly interested in her.'' Arbus' work has been consistently popular since her death, perhaps never more so in L.A. than now. MOCA at Geffen Contemporary features her work in a photo show, ``Street Credibility,'' through June 7. ``People are fascinated with what her work tells us about American culture,'' Sussman says. ``There's a willingness to look at all kinds of people and relationships.''

Peter Bunnell, a former curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, puts it this way: ``It seems to me, what disturbs people more than the subjects of these pictures, is the intensity of their power to dominate us, to literally stop us in midlife and demand we ask ourselves who we are.''

Arbus was born in New York in 1923. Her interest in photography began to blossom while she was working as a stylist for her husband, fashion photographer Allan Arbus. This show features some of that early work, including a 1945 self-portrait of her, semi-nude and pregnant.

She subsequently studied with several established fine-art photographers, especially Lisette Model in 1956. Afterward, Arbus took to New York with her 35 mm Nikon SLR looking for the impromptu and the offbeat - ``Woman on the street with parcels,'' ``Woman on the street with her eyes closed,'' ``Female impersonators in mirrors'' and more.

In the early 1960s, she switched to cameras better-suited to square pictures. She also began to place distinctive black borders around her developed images. In 1970, she reduced the borders because she thought the style was being imitated, according to the exhibition catalog.

She also had a keen interest in the movies as subject matter. Arbus photographed scenes from movies as they were projected on the screen, establishing early examples of conceptual re-photography and repetition. ``Clouds on screen at a drive-in, N.J.,'' from 1960, shows how interesting and expansive her photos could be when the subject matter wasn't people - the projected light makes the on-screen clouds weirdly luminescent, like a glowing flying saucer in a dark sky.

This exhibition meticulously re-creates the process by which Arbus scored her breakthrough - a commission by Esquire in 1960 to do a photo-essay about New York life, ``The Vertical Journey.'' The prescient Esquire art editor who hired her, Robert Benton, went on to co-write the ``Bonnie and Clyde'' screenplay and become a director.

``Revelations'' assembles and displays her work for the Esquire project, as well as for a subsequent one for Harper's Bazaar. Along with the results, we see her negatives, photocopies of her notebook pages, release forms from subjects and communications with Esquire editor Harold Hayes. It's like being present at the creation, while simultaneously seeing the timeless results.

Arbus was also a good writer who let her words transport her to strange regions. Some of her writing has been reproduced as wall text, and it is illuminating. Here's an excerpt from a 1959 journal entry about a dream she had: ``I am in an enormous ornate white gorgeous hotel which is on fire, doomed, but the fire is burning so slowly that people are still allowed to come and go freely.''

The additional material also provides insight on Eddie Carmel, Arbus' famous Jewish giant. Her photo of him stooping, while his seemingly tiny and weary parents look up at him in a drab, cramped room, has always seemed ineffably sad. With time, it's become a heartbreaking metaphor about the distance between parents and their children, especially during that chaotic era.

And yet, ``Revelations'' offers other photos of Carmel on a contact sheet - relaxed, smiling, entertaining. Sussman says Arbus photographed him over a 10- to 15-year period - ``He was very funny, evidently.'' Maybe someday a museum exhibit can be devoted just to this fascinating artist- subject relationship.

Perhaps Arbus' most famous series, on which she worked in 1970-71, was of mentally handicapped women celebrating Halloween in costume, or just at play. Hallucinatory in effect, the pictures can seem like a statement about life's strangeness, perhaps springing from depression. And yet, a letter to Allan Arbus in this show reveals something entirely different - a joy at the artistic breakthrough these subjects afforded:

``I took the most terrific pictures, the ones at Halloween in New Jersey of the retarded women. They are very blurred and variable, but some are gorgeous. Finally what I've been searching for, and I seem to have discovered sunlight. It's just marvelous. So lyric and tender and pretty.''

One of the ongoing questions about Arbus has been whether her work contributed to the depression from which she was suffering. There is much evidence in ``Revelations'' that her work was an escape from it - into the happiness of contact with people of all sorts. And, too, into contact with the beauty of art.

DIANE ARBUS REVELATIONS

Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.

When: The museum is open noon to 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; noon to 9 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Closed Wednesday.

Tickets: Adults $10 to $15, children 17 years and younger free. Call [phone] for tickets, or purchase online at www.lacma.org or in-person at the LACMA box office. Call [phone] or visit www.lacma.org for more information.

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(1 -- 3) no caption (Diane Arbus's photographs)