After taking a brief photography course with Berenice Abbott, Arbus met Lisette Model, an Austrian-born documentary photographer, and studied with her from about 1955 to 1957. With Model’s encouragement Arbus gave up commercial work to concentrate on fine-art photography. In 1960 Esquire published Arbus’s first photo-essay, in which she effectively juxtaposed privilege and squalor in New York City. Thereafter she made a living as a freelance photographer and photography instructor.

In 1963 and 1966 Arbus received Guggenheim fellowships to be part of a project titled “American Rites, Manners, and Customs.” During this period she mastered her technique of using a square format, which emphasizes the subject more than the photograph’s composition. She also used flash lighting, which gives her work a sense of theatricality and surrealism. She began at that time to explore the subjects that would occupy her for much of her career: individuals living on the outskirts of society and “normalcy,” such as nudists, transvestites, dwarfs, and the mentally or physically handicapped. Her own evident intimacy with the extraordinary subjects of her photos resulted in images that engage the sympathy and collusion of the viewer and elicit a strong response. Some critics saw her work as remarkably empathetic to its subjects, while others were disturbed by what they saw as a harsh, voyeuristic look into the lives of the disadvantaged.

In 1971 Arbus committed suicide. A collection of her photos was published in 1972 in connection with a successful major exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. That same year her work was shown at the Venice Biennale, marking the first time that an American photographer received that distinction. In 2003 an extensive exhibition of her work opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and later traveled throughout the United States and Europe. An accompanying book, Diane Arbus Revelations (2003), contained some 200 photographs as well as excerpts from her letters and notebooks. In 2007 Arbus’s estate gifted her complete archives—including photographic equipment, diary pages, and the negatives of some 7,500 rolls of film—to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Photos

Woman at a counter smoking, N.Y.C., 1962, THE MET

Lee Friedlander, Diane and Amy Arbus. New York City, 1963, MoMA

A Family On Their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, New YorkDate, 1968, Art Institute Chicago

Girl in a watch cap, NYC, 1965

Diane Arbus, Self-portrait with 35mm Contax D camera, 1959. Diane Arbus Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., 1966

Mexican dwarf in his hotel room

Transvestite With Her Birthday Cake, NYC, 1969. Photograph: © The Estate of Diane Arbus

Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1962

Lady in a rooming house parlor, Albion, NY 1963

Untitled (five women in masks), 1970-1971

Child in a Night Gown, Shelter Island, New York, 1957

Man in hat, trunks, socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y., 1960

"Two Girls in Curlers, N.Y.C" Diane Arbus 1963

Untitled, 1970–71

Woman - 1965

Marcello Mastroianni in his Hotel Room, NYC, circa 1962

Lady on a bus N.Y.C. 1957, THE MET

Kid in a hooded jacket aiming a gun, N.Y.C., 1957

Subway in New York, 1956 Photo by Diane Arbus

An empty movie theater, N.Y.C., 1971

The Junior Interstate Ballroom Dance Champions, Yonkers, NY, 1962

Mia Villiers-Farrow on a Bed, 1964

Child in a beret, N.Y.C., 1962

A flower girl at a wedding, Conn., 1964

A Child Crying, Diane Arbus (New Jersey, 1967) photo Diane Arbus

Fat Man at Carnival, 1970

Diane Arbus, photographiée par Stephen Frank, lors d'un cours à la Rhode Island School of Design en 1970.

Diane Arbus