Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus, born Diane Nemerov, was born on March 14, 1923, in New York City; she died on July 26, 1971, in Greenwich Village in the same city.

Diane Arbus began taking photographs in the early 1940s. Her meeting with Lisette Model in 1956 was a turning point in her career. It also marked the beginning of a long friendship and mutual support between the two women. 

Driven by questions of identity and its representation, Arbus portrays contemporary American society through marginalized communities, juxtaposing them with “normal” people depicted as strange creatures. Model quickly recognized in Arbus’s portraits an exchange of rare intensity between the photographer and her subject and encouraged her in her work. Her aesthetic follows in the tradition of August Sander and American documentary photography: posed portraits, an eye for detail, and rigorous composition with a frontal, centered approach to the subject. 

starting in 1958, Arbus stopped cropping her negatives. The use of a wide-angle lens and a flash, along with higher-contrast prints, helped accentuate the psychological qualities of her portraits. By the 1960s, her work was being published in leading American magazines and received support from institutions such as MoMA and the Guggenheim. Diane Arbus took her own life in 1971. She became the first female photographer to have an exhibition at the Venice Biennale the following year.