Maker/Artist
Arbus, Diane
American photographer, 1923-1971
Born into a prominent New York Jewish family; her brother was poet Howard Nemerov. She worked with her husband on fashion photography. Later she separated from him and began her own career. Arbus' best known work investigates societies' frailties in portraits of outsiders, notably circus freaks, the mentally handicapped, transvestites, and nudists. She is noted for expanding notions of acceptable subject matter and violates canons of the appropriate distance between photographer and subject. By befriending, not objectifying her subjects, she was able to capture in her work a rare psychological intensity. She was troubled by depression throughout her life and committed suicide in 1971.
