Outsiders: American Photography and Film 1950s-1980s

Idealists, outsiders, and those brave enough to be themselves, as depicted by visionary photographers and filmmakers including Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin, reveal another America.

A visual tour through life at the margins in the United States from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, Outsiders highlights the work of iconic photographers and filmmakers who profoundly changed the image of American culture. Kenneth Anger, Diane Arbus, Shirley Clarke, Nan Goldin, Danny Lyon, Garry Winogrand, and their contemporaries challenged rigid postwar society with their powerful films and photographs.

Lyon’s travels with Chicago biker gangs and Arbus’s swordswallowers form a dramatic counterpoint to a trove of midcentury images from Casa Susanna, a community of cross-dressers enjoying country life en femme. 

Outsiders captures diverse and significant subcultures and interests, united by each subject’s will to determine his or her own identity. Accompanying the images, essays by curators and critics explore American underground cinema, street photography, the distinct countercultures of New York and Los Angeles, and the spectacle of everyday living in a time of political and cultural turmoil.

Edited by Sophie Hackett and Jim Shedden, Foreword by Stephanie Smith, Contributions by Katherine A. Bussard and Martha Kirszenbaum