Freak Show
Citation
Sontag, Susan. “Freak Show.” The New York Review of Books 20, no. 18 (15 November 1973).
Later revised and incorporated into On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977). For the book compilation see src-sontag-1977.
Relevance
The second of Sontag’s five New York Review of Books essays. This essay is primarily focused on Diane Arbus and the aesthetic of the grotesque as a counter-tradition to the humanist photographic project exemplified by The Family of Man. By reading Arbus against the grain of Steichen’s universalism, Sontag constructs a genealogy in which the sentimental humanism of the 1955 exhibition is the implicit target of critique. The essay matters for Family of Man reception as an articulation of the aesthetic-ideological opposition between 1950s humanist photography and the subsequent generation.
Tier 2: same grounds as src-sontag-1973-nyrb-photography — named-author critical theory of record in NYRB.
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-04-30): WebFetch not permitted in this session. NYRB archive requires subscription for full text of 1973 issues. Body text NOT consulted in this round.
- Specific page-level arguments not available from this session. The essay’s central argument (Arbus as counter to humanist photography) is attributed in secondary literature cited in secondary sources but not independently verified from the primary text in this round.
- Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995: Sandeen addresses the Arbus/humanist opposition as part of the critical context — NOT re-fetched for page-level verification in this round.
Notes
- Second in the five-essay NYRB series: (1) “Photography” 18 Oct 1973; (2) “Freak Show” 15 Nov 1973; (3) “Shooting America” 18 Apr 1974; (4) “Photographic Evangels” 4 Nov 1976; (5) “The Image-World” 1977.
- Cross-reference to
src-sontag-1977(book compilation);src-sontag-1973-nyrb-photography(first essay in series). - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995: anchor for Family of Man reception history. verified: false: URL not fetched; full text not retrieved; body text NOT consulted in this round. Title, date, volume, and issue carried from standard bibliographic citation, not from a primary fetch.