The Fourth Wall

Author(s): Amy Arbus

Performing Arts

What happens when a performing actor leaves behind his lines, staging, sets, and lighting, and steps beyond the fourth wall? For three years, Amy Arbus has been exploring this question in a series of dramatic portraits of celebrated actors, both on and off Broadway. Fully costumed but stripped of their context, Arbus's actors remain in character as they step outside the fiction of theater into the reality of the world beyond. Staged in anonymous public spaces--in theater lobbies, on city streets, in parks, and in stage door alleys--Arbus's images achieve an unexpected blend of spectacle and high art; formality and sontaneity; vulnerability and pretense. Collected in "The Fourth Wall" are some of the modern stage's most gifted actors, including Alan Cumming in "Cabaret," John Malkovitch in "Lost Land," Liev Schreiber in "Talk Radio," Ed Harris in "Wrecks," Cherry Jones in "Doubt," Christine Ebersol in "Grey Gardens," and Ethan Hawke and Martha Plimpton in "The Coast of Utopia." Actors are included from such successful and ambitioud productions as" Wicked," "The Light in the Piazza," "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," and "The Color Purple," to name but a few. Portraits are accompanied by synopses of the plays as well as quotes from a number of the actors portrayed. In 2006's critically acclaimed book "On the Street," Arbus focused her lens on those who dressed to express themselves--now she turns her attention to those who dress to become someone else. The result is a collection of potent photographs that pay remarkable tribute to contemporary theater and the performers who bring fantasy to life.


Product Information

..".Dramatic portraits by Amy Arbus..her images achieve an unexpected blend of spectacle and high art, formality and spontaneity, vulnerability and pretense." -"Photo Review" Magazine "As a veteran photographer of 27 years and daughter of Diane Arbus, Amy Arbus has just about seen it all, but she hasn't lost her sense of awe for the magic of the theater. Her new book, "The Fourth Wall," catches actors in character in 80 tritone images, many of which debuted in this magazine. The partner exhibit is a must for photo buffs and theater rats alike." --"New York Magazine" ""The Fourth Wall" is the photographer Amy Arbus's fourth book of pictures, and it is her masterpiece. Taken over the course of three years, the images are of actors acting, but they are not onstage. Arbus has posed her subjects backstage, or outside, near the theaters where they are set to perform. The title refers to the curtain of disbelief one must draw in an effort to pretend that the action onstage is somehow natural, and Arbus's images are about adults who believe in the transformative effect of fairy tales--and greasepaint. In these square-format black-and-white photographs, Arbus captures a moment of being someone else. In one expectionally powerful portrait, we see the great artist, Judy Garland, in "The Boy from Oz" (2004). Tiny and forlorn but still forceful, standing in the alley leading to the stage door, Keating is raising her right hand in a kind of Judy-like offering of the soul. But you can tell that Keating would never give herself up, not entirely, to a photographer, unless she could be someone other than herself. You get the picture. --"The New Yorker" "Amy Arbus (Diane's daughter) put some of theater's big names in costume and took them--literally--Off-Broadway." --"People Magazine"

Amy Arbus has been photographing professionally for twenty-seven years. She is a contributing photographer to "New York Magazine"'s theater section. Her photograph of "The House in Town" was included in the PDN Annual 2007 as one of the top twenty-five photographs of the year. Her photographs have appeared in over one hundred periodicals around the world, including "The New Yorker," " Aperture," "People," and "The New York Times Magazine." Her most recent book of photographs, "On the Street," was published by Welcome Books in 2006. She has exhibited her photography worldwide in more than eighteen one-woman exhibitions, and her photographs are a part of the collections at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

General Fields

  • : 9781599620442
  • : Welcome Enterprises, Inc
  • : Welcome Enterprises, Inc
  • : April 2008
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Amy Arbus
  • : Hardback
  • : 779.2092
  • : 160
  • : chiefly Illustrations