The Darkroom Master Keeping Diane Arbus’s Vision Alive

Neil Selkirk, photographer and darkroom wizard, is perhaps best known as the only person who has printed Diane Arbus’s work since her death, in 1971. Working closely with Doon Arbus, Diane’s eldest daughter and executor of the estate, Selkirk has served as a longtime consigliere on matters pertaining to Diane Arbus’s prints and their reproduction. During her time as Aperture’s creative director, Lesley A. Martin worked with Doon and Selkirk to maintain the faithfulness of reproduction in Diane Arbus’s books—from the remastering of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph, first published in 1972, to the publication of the close study of Arbus’s Box of ten portfolio, and the reissue of Revelations, in 2022. In late June, on the occasion of two major exhibitions of Arbus’s work, one in Los Angeles and one in New York, Martin sat down to talk with Selkirk about the more than fifty years he has dedicated to channeling the artist’s intentions as experienced through the prints of her work.

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