Intro to Photography: January 2011

Diane Arbus was born to a wealthy Jewish family in New York City. Her parents owned the famous department store, Russeks, on fifth avenue. She is quoted saying, "I grew up feeling immune and exempt from circumstance. One of the things I suffered from was that I never felt adversity. I was confirmed in a sense of unreality." This sense of never feeling adversity is perhaps why she focused her career on taking pictures of people who were not considered "normal." She acquired a passion for photographing people with disabilities, transvestites, dwarfs, giants.. etc.

She married Allan Arbus (also a photographer) and they dedicated the earlier part of their career to fashion photography. They contributed to magazines such as Vogue and Harpers Bazaar even though they both hated the fashion world. Consequently, in 1956 Diane left the fashion business to pursue her own interests. Diane and Allan divorced in 1969 and although difficult for her, Allan told The New York Times, " I always felt it was our separation that made her a photographer."

By the early 1960's her photographs began to acquire a distinctive look. "Though taken of mainly traditional subjects -- actors, writers, activists -- they were strange and obscurely troubling. She would spend hours with her subjects, following them to their homes or offices, talking and listening to them, trying to soften them up to the point where they began to drop their public façade" (Oppenheimer, Daniel). Also, as mentioned previously she is known and most famous for taking photographs of non traditional subjects. She is often known as "the chronicler of freaks."

*She once said,"Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."

In July of 1971, at the age of 48, Diane committed suicide. The following year MOMA held an exhibit of her work - it was the most attended solo photography exhibition in its history. The monograph that came after the exhibition, edited by Diane's daughter and close friend, became one of the best selling art books in history.

Here are a few of her well known pictures....