Hubert’s Freaks: The Rare-Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus
Friday, December 18th, 2009
Book dealer Bob Langmuir stumbled on a collection of material related to a performer in Hubert’s Museum, a seedy New York City sideshow. After acquiring the material he realized that it included a number of what appeared to be Diane Arbus photographs. The story of how he came by the “archive”, how he had the photos authenticated, and how he tried to sell the lot should be a fascinating one. It might be, if Gibson had done a good job of telling it.
Gibson can’t seem to focus. Is the book about the side show, Bob Lagmuir’s marriage and divorce, issues of provenance related to Arbus photographs, or the ethics of buying low and selling high? There’s way too much information about Langmuir’s family life and far too little about Arbus’s work at the museum. Gibson tries to ascribe cosmic significance to everything but his time would have been better spent editing his sometimes-awkward prose.
The book’s natural conclusion would have been the sale of the material, but it ends before that sale takes place. In fact, the sale mentioned in the book has yet to take place since further legal issues arose after the book’s publication. Finally, a note on that title page that “the names of several individuals in this book have been changed to protect their identity” makes me wonder just what the real story is.
