Diane Arbus

Sotheby's London, 9 May 1991, Sale 1291, Lot 228

Diane Arbus (Aperture, 1972), unpaginated

Diane Arbus: Revelations (New York, 2003), p. 43

Sarah Hermanson Meister, ed., Arbus Friedlander Winogrand: New Documents, 1967 (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2017), p. 39

During the summer of 1965, Diane Arbus worked in and around Washington Square Park, located in Greenwich Village:

‘. . . The park was divided. It has these walks, sort of like a sunburst, and there were these territories staked out. There were young hippie junkies down one row. There were lesbians down another. . . And in the middle were winos. They were like the first echelon and the girls who came from the Bronx to become hippies would have to sleep with the winos to get to sit on the other part with the junkie hippies. It was really remarkable. And I found it very scary.. . There were days I just couldn’t work there and then there were days I could. And then, having done it a little, I could do it more. I got to know a few of them. I hung around a lot. They were a lot like sculptures in a funny way. I was very keen to get close to them, so I had to ask to photograph them. You can’t get that close to somebody and not say a word, although I have done that.’ (Aperture, 1972, unpaginated)

Arbus began printing her photographs with black borders in 1965, and all of the Washington Square photographs feature them. Early prints of ‘Girl with a Cigar in Washington Square Park, N. Y. C.’ have particularly heavy borders, shown in the present print as well as the print exhibited in the New Documents exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967.  The black borders are all but eliminated in the posthumous prints of this image in favor of hazy, irregular ones, reflective of Arbus’ evolving printing preference.

While later prints are numerous in both public and private collections, early examples are exceptionally rare. At the time of this writing, it is believed that no other early print of this image has been offered at auction.