Arbus, Diane

Arbus, Diane ärˈbəs [key], 1923–71, American photographer, b. New York City. For nearly 20 years Arbus operated a successful fashion photography studio with her husband, Allan Arbus. She studied with Lisette Model and began, in the late 1950s, to make the intimate and powerful visual record of life on the margins of society for which she became renowned. Her empathetic acceptance of what she saw set her work apart and gave her access to the usually unapproachable: transvestites, dwarves, prostitutes, nudists, giants, carnival sideshow performers, the mentally impaired, and those often stigmatized as strange or ugly. Arbus, who battled depression throughout her life, died a suicide at 48. One of the most acclaimed and influential American photographers of the latter 20th cent., Arbus was the sister of the poet Howard Nemerov.

See collections of work the aperture monograph Diane Arbus (1972), Diane Arbus, Magazine Work (1984), Diane Arbus: Untitled (1995), and Diane Arbus: Revelations (2003) biographies by P. Bosworth (1984) and A. Lubow (2016).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Photography: Biographies