Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus – Life, Work, and Vision

Diane Arbus (1923–1971), American photographer, pushed the boundaries of portrait photography with her stark, unflinching images of people on society’s edges. Explore her life, style, controversies, and lasting influence.

Introduction

Diane Arbus remains one of the most provocative and influential photographers of the 20th century. She is often remembered for her penetrating portraits of subjects who are marginalized, unusual, or overlooked. Through her work, she challenged norms of beauty, normalcy, and photographic distance. Her life was turbulent, her art bold, and her legacy both admired and critically examined.

Born March 14, 1923, and dying July 26, 1971, Arbus’s output spanned roughly two decades, during which she transformed how portraiture could confront the familiar, the uncanny, and the human condition in its rawness.

Early Life and Family

Diane Nemerov (later Arbus) was born in New York City into an affluent Jewish family. Her family owned the upscale Fifth Avenue fur and fashion store Russeks, which offered her a life of material comfort but also a sense of constraint and tension.

She had a brother, Howard Nemerov, who later became a well-known poet, and her nephew, Alexander Nemerov, also followed an artistic path.

In her youth, Arbus was exposed to the art world, fashion, and high society, yet she also felt a distance from that world, which would later fuel her interest in the margins.

Early Career & Transition to Photography

Marriage and Commercial Photography

In 1941, Diane married Allan Arbus, who would become a photographer. The couple worked together in a commercial photography business called Diane & Allan Arbus, where Diane primarily conceptualized shoots and styling while Allan operated the camera.

They did fashion and advertising assignments, contributing to magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. However, Diane grew increasingly dissatisfied with the aesthetic constraints and depersonalization of commercial work.

Mentorship & Shift to Personal Work

Diane began studying photography in a deeper way, receiving encouragement from photographers such as Lisette Model, who taught her to look for specificity and strangeness in the everyday. Under Model’s influence, Diane embraced the idea that the more specific, the more universal in photography.

By the early 1960s, Arbus moved away from 35 mm cameras and adopted a medium-format Rolleiflex modular twin-lens reflex camera, allowing her to create square-format negatives with clarity and presence. She also used flash in daylight, isolating subjects from the background and giving her portraits a surreal, confronting edge.

Style, Approach & Signature Works

Subjects and Focus

Arbus’s work centered on individuals and groups on the edges: performers, dwarfs, giants, twins, nudists, transvestites, people with physical and mental differences, and ordinary people in unusual circumstances. Her photographs often depict people in their own settings—homes, streets, workplaces—yet with a directness that creates tension.

One of her most iconic photographs is Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967, which has become emblematic of her style and subject fascination with identity and doubling. Another is Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. (1962), known for its energy, tension, and odd juxtaposition of innocence and menace.

Aesthetic & Technique

Arbus’s style is often described as direct, frontal, unadorned, and confrontational. Her portraits are frequently centered in the frame, with the subject looking directly at the camera, sometimes in ambiguous or unsettling ways.

Her use of flash in daylight created a stark separation between subject and background, emphasizing details and texture, often rendering surroundings as flattened or theatrical.

She embraced emotional complexity, vulnerability, and ambiguity. Rather than offering easy spectacle, her photographs often provoke reflection, discomfort, fascination, and empathy in the viewer.

She once said:

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

And:

“For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.”

Reception, Controversies & Legacy

Reception & Major Exhibitions

Arbus’s work was controversial in her lifetime. Some saw her images as voyeuristic, exploitative, or cruel; others praised her boldness, empathy, and honesty.

In 1972 (a year after her death), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) mounted a retrospective of her work curated by John Szarkowski. The exhibition became one of the most attended in MoMA history.

That same year she became the first American photographer included in the Venice Biennale.

Her monograph Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph (1972) remains in print and widely influential.

In recent years, exhibitions such as Diane Arbus: Constellation (2025) have revisited her work with fresh curatorial strategies, displaying hundreds of prints in immersive settings.

Personal Struggles & Death

Arbus struggled with mental health issues, depression, and occasional self-doubt. On July 26, 1971, she died by suicide in New York City.

Her death at age 48 left many questions about the relationship between creativity, mental struggle, and artistic ambition.

Legacy & Influence

• Arbus changed the boundaries of what could be photographed and what subject matter was acceptable in art photography.

• She influenced many photographers who explore identity, abnormality, the body, and marginal lives.

• Her notion that photography can reveal hidden aspects of reality and provoke tension between viewer and subject has been deeply studied in photographic theory, visual culture, and critical studies.

• Her photographs command high value in the art market; her iconic images continue to be exhibited, published, and analyzed.

• Her concept of reciprocity in looking—where the subject “looks back”—is often cited as a paradigm in portraiture theory.

Notable Quotes

Here are some of Diane Arbus’s most memorable words, which reveal her approach, philosophy, and inner tensions:

• “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

• “The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.”

• “For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.”

• “The camera is a kind of license.”

• “My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”

• “Photography was a licence to go whenever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.”

• “I don’t press the shutter. The image does. And it’s like being gently clobbered.”

• “It’s important to take bad pictures. It’s the bad ones that have to do with what you’ve never done before.”

These quotes highlight her tension between control and surrender, her fascination with the unknown, and her belief in photography as a form of revelation.

Lessons from Diane Arbus’s Journey

1. Embrace discomfort & uncertainty
   Arbus’s work often dwells on what unsettles us. To grow as an artist or thinker, sometimes one must engage with tension, irregularity, and ambiguity.

2. Push subject matter boundaries
   Her courage to photograph “outsiders,” unidealized bodies, and unconventional lives expanded what photography could do. Innovation often lies in asking, What am I afraid to photograph?

3. The subject is central, not the tool
   Her insistence that the subject matters more than technique or composition is a reminder that meaning and human presence must anchor art.

4. Reciprocal gaze matters
   Arbus’s subjects often look back, forcing the viewer to become aware of their own position. Power in photography can be negotiated visually.

5. Strive for specificity
   Her mentor Lisette Model influenced her understanding that vivid specificity (rather than abstract generality) resonates more universally.

6. Value persistence over perfection
   She embraced “bad pictures” as part of exploring territory you haven’t yet mastered. Experimentation and risk are part of creative path.

7. Be aware of mental health in art
   Her life and death remind us of the fragility that often accompanies deep sensitivity. Self-care, awareness, and support are important for sustained creativity.

Conclusion

Diane Arbus’s legacy is as haunting as it is generative. Her pictures confront us, unsettle us, and force us to question our assumptions about normalcy, beauty, identity, and the act of looking itself. Despite personal struggles, she produced work that continues to provoke discussion, influence new generations, and occupy a central place in photographic history.