The following appeared in the Christie's sale catalog regarding a recent offering of this work at auction.

Location: New York, Rockefeller Plaza
Sale Date Apr 18, 2001
Lot Number 292 Sale Number 9618
Creator DIANE ARBUS (1923-1971)
Lot Title Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J.
Estimate 120,000 - 180,000 U.S. dollars
Price Realized Unsold

Pre-lot Text PROPERTY FORMERLY IN THE COLLECTION OF DR. HELEN BOIGON, NEW YORK

Lot Description
DIANE ARBUS (1923-1971)
Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J.
Gelatin silver print. 167-69. Stamped 'a diane arbus print', signed and numbered 4349-14-OAU-1620 by Doon Arbus, Administrator, reproduction limitation stamp, Estate copyright stamp dated 71 in ink, annotated This Photograph Is Protected By Copyright Belonging To The Estate of Diane Arbus in ink on the reverse of the flush-mount. 14* x 12*in. (36.9 x 31.7cm.) Framed.

Provenance
From the artist; to Dr. Helen Boigon, New York; Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, New York, April 7, 1998, lot 437A; to the present owner.

Literature See: Aperture, Diane Arbus, cover.

Lot Notes
"What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's. And that's what all this is a little bit about. That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own."- Diane Arbus, An Aperture Monograph, 1972, p. 2

Diane Arbus's inclusion in John Szarkowski's 1967 exhibition, "New Documents" established her reputation firmly in the vanguard of photography's modern masters. Arbus's use of the so-called "snapshot aesthetic," a seemingly casual or naïve approach to picture-making descending from the documentary formalism of Walker Evans and the influence of Henri Cartier-Bresson's "Decisive Moment," expanded the lexicon of photography by introducing a decidedly psychological layering to her portraiture. Whether intentional or not, Arbus's photographs of people she met on the street and in public places, in those of strangers she befriended or even in the magazine assignments she coveted, her subjects convey the complexity of their experience through the trust she elicited during her sittings. Not until Cindy Sherman's directorial and consciously invented appropriated personas entered contemporary art would photographs of the human face hold such fascination for so many people. The incredible reception Arbus's images received at the Museum of Modern Art by a public that discovered itself in her photographs is difficult to imagine today. The tension derived from the intensely fine line drawn between the strange and the familiar in her pictures fueled the popular reaction to her work. Currently, the 1972 Aperture monograph of her work is into its seventeenth printing.

"New Documents" was so influential and its legacy so lasting, it essentially circumscribed the idea of art photography until the Post-Modern era. Arbus's radical vision, with its ability to simultaneously startle and familiarize the viewer with her subject, was a combustible commodity in an era that was highly flammable itself. The exhibition's influence is still felt today in the works of artists such as Nan Goldin (lots 359-362) and Philip-Lorca diCorcia (lots 356 -358).

According to Patricia Bosworth, author of Diane Arbus: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), Arbus was reluctant to participate in the exhibition, fearing that "she'd be misunderstood - afraid that her pictures would only be considered on the crudest level, with no self-reflection on the part of the viewer." She had reservations about the selection of pictures, deciding that her earlier images from 1962-64 did not reflect her mature work. "She thought her latest pictures - like the twins - were better." Szarkowski had already decided to include it in the exhibition. Bosworth writes that "[To Diane,] twins represented a paradox she longed to continue exploring and she did. She would photograph actress Estelle Parsons' twin daughters over and over again; she would photograph elderly twins and twins married to twins, and each picture seemed to ask what is it like to live in a body that is virtually indistinguishable from your twin's? Diane suspected that the ultimate challenge was to try creating a separate identity" (op. cit., p. 240).

Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey has become the signature image of Arbus's career. It graced the cover of the Aperture monograph and has been used on numerous posters. Stanley Kubrick, the filmmaker and an accomplished still photographer in his own right, drew upon the image in the casting of the ghost twins in his film adaptation of Stephen King's "The Shining." Additionally, Arbus included it in the portfolio she was publishing at the time of her death, A Box of Ten Photographs.

By all accounts, Diane Arbus was a complex artist and individual whose career is an arc of intensity that tragically ends with her suicide in 1971 at the age of 48. While it may be tempting to relate the cause of her death with the radical extremes she went through to obtain her pictures, ultimately she seriously considered the strategies she developed for gaining the trust of her subjects and was devoted to her sitters. Whatever psychological forces were at work causing her states of severe depression, it was the same mind that propelled her into working vigorously. Arbus has proved to be one of the most influential
photographers of her generation despite, or perhaps because of, the sad parenthesis surrounding her career. The nature of her pictures, coupled with the coincidence of her suicide and her last photographs of residents at an institution for the mentally handicapped in Vineland, New Jersey, all contribute to the tragic legacy of her work. Had she survived and the Vineland pictures were but a statement and not the punctuating period of her career, we might look upon her work differently today.

Arbus had sought help with her depression throughout her life. The print of Identical Twins offered here is formerly the property of Helen Boigon, M.D., mentioned anonymously in Bosworth's biography as "the young woman M.D., a Neo-Freudian who had incorporated the teachings of Karen Horney into her method of treatment." She had worked with artists for many years and had been a friend of Georgia O'Keeffe whose work was collected by the doctor. Arbus had come to Dr. Boigon beginning in 1969 after the insistent urging of friends concerned about her well being and had been under the psychiatric care of Dr. Boigon when she committed suicide. Again, according to Bosworth, she took an immediate liking to the young doctor (ibid, p. 286). She has been quoted as saying that she found the photographer "very articulate and communicative" and "fascinated with all things weird, freakish, startling and perverse." This print of Identical Twins was a personal gift of the photographer to Dr. Boigon. The implications of this act - beyond the meaning of such a gift in the context of her psychotherapy - reflects the artist's own high regard of the importanceof this image. Dr. Boigon recounted that "I was not at all familiar with her work hitherto, and this [the print offered here] was one she brought to me to illustrate the kind of work she preferred (in contrast to fashion) and she spontaneously said, 'oh, you just keep it!"

From the hundreds of her own images, that Arbus chose Identical Twins as a representative and self-defining icon of her work is a gesture dense with meaning. The print itself was of course produced between 1967 and 1969, or no more than two years after the original negative. One would also presume that, for this "presentation print" to an extremely important figure in her life at that time, Arbus would have selected a print meeting the most exacting standards of the photographer.

At a time when collectors covet photographs that are linked through their provenance directly to the artist and their era, the appearance of this print is especially significant. In contrast to the personal gift print offered here, the most numerous prints of this image are those printed posthumously by Neil Selkirk from the original negative to fulfill the unrealized edition of 50. Lifetime prints of this image, particularly those with a lineage of ownership so personally associated with the artist are considered rare.

Accompanied by correspondence from Dr. Boigon and a letter of authentication from the Estate of Diane Arbus.