Arbus The Photographer

Diane Arbus

Born March 14th 1923 New York

Died July 26th 1971 New York

Diane Arbus was an American photographer who was noted for her square black and white portraits of dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists and circus performs.

Personal Life

Born Diane Nemerov she came from a wealth Jewish couple who insulated her from the great depression of the 1930‘s, because her family owned a famous Fifth Avenue department store called Russek’s in New York City. Her father David Nemerov became a painter later on in he’s life. She had a young sister and an older brother. Diane attended Fieldston School for Ethical Culture basically a prep school. At 18 she married Mr Allan Arbus who was her long time sweetheart. They went onto having two girls called Doon and Amy. Diane and Allen spilt up in 1958 and divorced in 1969.

Photographic career

Diane and her husband were both interested in photography. In 1941 the two of them visited a gallery of Alfred Stieglitz a photographer of modern art and avid campaigner to make photography become acceptable as an art form. Whilst Diane was there she learnt about photographers like Mathew Brady who best know for his portraits of celebrities and of the American civil war. He as also had been credited as being the father of photojournalism.

TimothyH O'sullivan a photographer best known for his work on Western United states and of the Civil war. Timothy was employed by Brady’s team and produced some memorial work with the most famous being “The Harvest of Death”. Bill Brandt a British photographer famous for images of all levels of British society and distorted nudes. EugeneAtget was a French photographer noted for he’s documenting style of Paris’s street scenes and architecture.

In the early 1940’s Diane’s father employed both of them to photograph the store to make advertisement posters. In 1946 the Arbuse's began a business called “Diane & Allen Arbus” with Diane as the art director. They shot pictures for Glamour, Seventeen, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines even though they both hated fashion.

In 1956 Diane quit the business and began studying with Lisette Model. Even though Diane had study early with Berenice Abbott it would be Model that would lead Arbus to her well known methods and style. Diane started working on assignments for Harper’s bazaar, Esquire and the Sunday Times in 1962. Diane switched from a 35mm Nikon to a Twin-lens reflex Rolleiflex which produced the detailed squared image that she is famous for. In 1963 Arbus was awarded a GuggenheimFellowship on American rites, customs and manners it was renewed 1966. Though out the 60’s she taught at a number of schools.

Her first major exhibition of photographs was at the Museum of modern Art in 1967. It was called “New Documents” and curated by JohnSzarkowski. Most of her work was done on assignment like a 1968 documentary shoot, of poor share croppers in South Carolina for Esquire magazine. As her fame increased, Szarkowski hired Diane in 1970 to research an exhibition on photojournalism simple called “From the Picture Press”. The exhibition includes pictures from Weege. Weege was a press photographer and street photographer of crime scenes and the emergencies. Arbus admired Weege’s work.

My views

The first reaction that people have to Arbus work is one on of horror and shock, especially at the images of transvestite’s, dwarf’s and masked midgets. But you could have feelings of intrigued and sadness as you view the picture of freaks. As your eyes ponder over the images, you seem to be compiled to look more deeply into the picture and you can’t help but wonder about the person’s life and how they must of felt. I myself have mixed emotions when I view Arbus work. Diane seem to follow the same theme in many of her later photograph’s were she move away from the more fashionable photo’s she took in her earlier days. Arbus's later work would be the images that would make her famous. By looking at the images of dwarfs, Trans and circus performers, you can’t help but notice that each and every picture as it’s own personality. In most on the portrait’s I have noticed that Arbus liked to take photo’s of women sitting on there beds. I think this was due to the fact that Diane like to meet people and would encourage them to talk about there life mainly in there own houses and dressing rooms. It’s like Arbus as gone into their own personal space and captured apart of their lives.

I feel that in her personal life Arbus had many ups and downs with her depression. I mean if you look her work and her life you find the same. Arbus seem to shoot the high life and then the other end of the scale, with the misfits and down and outs. A sort of documentary on how Diane felt in her life, maybe she felt persecuted like the people in her images. On the other hand maybe she was brought these people to the world’s attention. These people would normally be sweep under the table. At that time in history misfits were better forgot about and definitely not talked about. They were the sort of thing you would see at a circus freak show, were people would pay to see them. It must have been hard for Arbus. She would have come under very hash criticism from society for her very conversable image‘s. Not long before she committed suicide in 1971, she told Model that she hated those images. I wonder what she would think about them these days, as the worlds attitude has change so much since the 60’s and the early 70‘s.

You can see what kind of influence these photograph’s had on her work. I think that Tim O’sullivan with his “The Harvest of Death” piece. With the mist and shocking dead soldiers lying on the grass. In Arbus work she tried to be shocking sometimes like O’sullivan did. I feel that the most influence photographers probably were Weege and Model. The techniques were adjusted and refined from Model’s work. Which all came together to produce photo’s of people with intellectual disability. A brilliant piece of work, even though Arbus didn’t realise it at the time.

My Favourite Arbus

One of my favourite photographs of Diane Arbus is “A Flower Girl at aWedding” 1964. Firstly when you look at this picture you can’t help but feel that it isn’t a very nice day. It’s like the young girl as just walked out of the mist in the foreground. She is a very ghostly figure in appearance, with a blank expression on her face. Was this picture taken early in the morning or at dust you decide. Truly an amazing photograph that Arbus took that morning.