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New book on lost photos of diane arbus

Date published: 4/13/2008

WHAT DO YOU get when you mix together an antiquarian book dealer looking to make a big score, a celebrated photographer who suicided in 1971 and a steaming slice of what critic Greil Marcus calls "the old, weird America"?

That's easy. You get Gregory Gibson's new nonfiction "Hubert's Freaks." And you just might not get your hands on a book quite this odd, or possibly this well written all year long.

The author, like his protagonist Bob Langmuir, also happens to be a book dealer. While plying the book trade, Langmuir stumbles upon a trunk containing the archives of Hubert's Dime Museum and Flea Circus, a 1950s 42nd Street New York City freak show.

The Times Square freak show was the same one that fashion photog turned portrait photog Diane Arbus frequented.

Inside the trunk are a number of rarely seen original photos by Arbus of some of the show's denizens. Arbus photos today are much sought after and bring bids in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Will this turn out to be the find of a lifetime or just a collector's pipe dream?

Langmuir's quest to authenticate and sell the art is reminiscent of the journey of the feisty tractor-trailer driving, 73-year-old Teri Horton in the 2006 documentary film "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?"

Horton paid $5 at a thrift shop for a drip-technique painting that might or might not have been splattered by American abstract painter Jackson Pollock.

Horton and Langmuir each end up butting heads with members of both the art establishment and the artists' estates in their efforts to gain credibility and wealth. Langmuir goes through a nervous breakdown and a nasty divorce in his discovery's aftermath.

Just a pair of quibbles with an otherwise very satisfying and rewarding read--one complaint directed at the book's publisher, another at its editors.

The first regards the book's packaging. The book's title and subtitle are confusing and don't do justice to the material. And the jacket art is uninspiring, although some of the photos in the text are stunning.

Next, the book would have benefited from some restructuring. At the book's start, chapters alternate between the stories of Arbus and Langmuir. By the end, it's all Langmuir.

Book dealers' obsessions are what we find interesting. Thus, we could have used, throughout, more about Arbus and the freak show world that so fascinated and inspired her.

Kurt Rabin is a copy editor at The Free Lance-Star.

HUBERT'S FREAKS The Rare-Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus By Gregory Gibson (Harcourt, $24)

Date published: 4/13/2008