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Diane Arbus was a photographer known for her black and white portraits of people outside of mainstream American culture. She lived in New York City and committed suicide at age 48. She started her career as a fashion photographer with her husband Allan Arbus but pursued her own photography career after their separation. Her style was dark and candid, with famous images including Child with Toy Hand Grenade and Identical Twins. She has been criticized for exploiting her subjects but has also received great respect for her work, including a retrospective exhibition called “Revelations.”
Diane Arbus is a well-known photographer from the United States who specialized in black and white portraits of people, including many “monsters”, as she called them such as dwarfs, giants, transsexuals and others that existed outside of mainstream American culture. Diane Arbus, whose name was pronounced Dee-ANN, lived in New York City for most of her life, from 1923 to 1971. She committed suicide at age 48.
Born to a wealthy Jewish family in New York as Diane Nemerov, she married husband Allan Arbus at the age of 18. Together, Alan and Diane Arbus have grown into a successful fashion photography team. Generally, Alan took the photos while Diane Arbus styled the shots. Diane then started taking photography lessons from the famous photographer, Lisette Model, and started taking more photographs.
Allan and Diane Arbus separated in 1959 and Alan later had a successful career as an actor, with roles in M*A*S*H and many other television programmes. After their split, Diane Arbus aggressively pursued her photography career, training with renowned photographers such as Richard Avedon and Alexey Brodovich. Pictures of her began appearing in magazines including The New York Times Magazine and Esquire.
Diane Arbus’ photography style was very dark, usually intended to capture candid moments. One of her most famous images, titled Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City, shows a boy with a manic, aggressive expression on his face, clutching a toy hand grenade. Another iconic image by Diane Arbus is Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967: a photograph of a pair of twins in matching outfits. The image served as a model for the ghostly twins in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of The Shining.
Throughout her career, Diane Arbus has often been criticized for exploiting her subjects. However, others believe that she was simply loyal to her subjects and that she showed great empathy in her photographic portraits of her. Recently, Diane Arbus’ photographic legacy has received great respect, with a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of her work and her letters called “Revelations,” appearing at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and other museums in Worldwide. A recent film about Diane Arbus, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, starred Nicole Kidman as Diane.
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