[Mother & Child] On Diane Arbus's [Woman Carrying Child in Central Park]

          William Tammeus once quoted “You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around and why his parents will always wave back.” Diane Arbus captures this very image, the bond between mother and child, an indivisible, unbreakable bond, both indefinite and defying all definitions of both natural and social world.

 

          A child nestled in the arms of his mother falls directly into the social compact, the very few, infinite. We were born individually but we weren’t meant to live that way. There is a vast craving for the contact of another, for the love of another, of others, an unspeakable bond which becomes ample to explain all, leaving nothing unsaid even without anything having been said.

 

          The day is a gloomy one, or one advancing quickly, unstoppably into the evening, people are scattering or conglomerate in the backdrop, allowing the scenario to unfold, possessing character into sharp disbelief and what is left, what is stark, apparent and accurate, is an artistic ideal that obliterates everything, a shot of one woman who nourishes a child deep into a dream-world, keeps him safe while he’s dreaming, which nourishes a future, where all humanity finds continuum.