The Early Years
Diane Nemerov was born in NYC in 1923 to a rich Jewish family. Her father was director of a fur and fashion emporium and had an eye for trends in women’s fashion. Fur made the family rich and Diane enjoyed a privileged upbringing on Park Avenue with her younger sister Renee and older brother Howard, who went on to become US poet laureate. Diane was described as ‘nubile’ and ‘birdlike’ with large green eyes and delicate features.
The Arbus Partnership
Diane met Allan Arbus at 14 and married him at 18, much to her parents’ chagrin. They worked in partnership, setting up a fashion photography business with Allan taking photos while Diane worked as his stylist, making his subjects look more glamorous. Allan gave her a camera and she started taking her own photos in the early 1940s.
Going Her Own Way
In 1956 she decided to branch out on her own with work. A few years later the marriage broke down and she began to reinvent herself, producing honest and raw photos of NYC street life, which later became her trademark. ‘I photograph things nobody would see unless I photographed them.’ she said. She focused on people on the edge of society – freaks, transvestites, dwarfs and giants. She liked to work alone and was voyeuristic in her approach.
‘I always felt that it was our separation that made her a photographer,’ Allan told the New York Times some time later. ‘I couldn’t have stood for her going to the places she did. She’d go to bars on the Bowery and to people’s houses. I would have been horrified.’
By the early 1960s her commercial work was being published in Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire and the New York Times Magazine, and she had forged her own distinctive style. She liked to spend lots of time with her subjects, with the aim of getting behind the exterior image in search of the real person. In 1962 she began using a twin-lens Rolleiflex instead of a single lens 35mm camera. This gave her a sharper, more personal photo, in a square classical style. She said she felt more able to connect with her subjects using this method.
Diane was criticised for her voyeurism and accused of demeaning her subjects especially those in mental institutions, who were not able to give their consent to her photography.
She suffered from depression throughout her life and committed suicide aged in 1971 aged 48 by taking barbiturates and slashing her wrists in the bath.
Arbus’ Final Work
Her final exhibition was held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972, a year after her suicide. It was the most widely attended photography exhibition in history.
V&A Museum: Diane Arbus Revelations
‘Many visitors are very moved by the photographs. The work provokes strong reactions. There is an intense level of emotion in Arbus’ work that is raw and touches viewers deeply,’ says Martin Barnes, Curator of Photographs at the V&A Museum in London. Her work has influenced many modern photographers and raises lots of questions – why did people allow her to photograph them so closely? How did she gain access to mental institutions to take photos? She forced people to think about photography as an art form and how moralistic it was.
Resources
- Diane Arbus: Revelations, Random House, September 30, 2003.
- Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, 2006, directed by Steven Shainberg.
- V & A Museum, host to Diane Arbus Revelations, 13 October 2005 – 15 January 2006.
