"Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.”

----Diane ArbusMoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, prepared to stage a retrospective on Arbus in 1972, producing an accompanying Diane Arbus Revelations catalogue.

The proposal was turned down by all major publishing houses, due to the contraversial nature of her work and death.Aperature’s Michael E. Hoffman accepted the challenge. The show and catalogue were and are a huge success.

It has been said she challenges the boundaries of norms…

Diane Arbus is best known for her artwork consisting mostly of New Yorkers. Portraits of children,

Boy with Toy Hand Grenade, Central Park, 1962

Early work: used 35mm camera.

Documentary style, similar to others of the period.

Personal encounter.

Diane Arbus is best known for her artwork consisting mostly of New Yorkers. Portraits of children, carnival performers,

Albino sword swallower at a carnival, MD. 1970

"I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse."

A Young Brooklyn Family Going on a Sunday Outing, N.Y.C., 1966

Diane Arbus is best known for her artwork consisting mostly of New Yorkers. Portraits of children, carnival performers, middle-class families,

Representing what is considered familiar with the unfamiliar…

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A young man in curlers at home on west 20th st. NYC, 1966

Diane Arbus is best known for her artwork consisting mostly of New Yorkers. Portraits of children, carnival performers,

couples, middle-class families, nudists, transvestites,

…exploring the relationships between appearance and identity…

42nd Street Movie Theatre Audience, N.Y.C., 1958

Woman With a Veil on Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C. 1968

…illusion and belief, theater and reality…

Diane Arbus is best known for her artwork consisting mostly of New Yorkers. Portraits of children, carnival performers, couples, middle-class families, nudists, transvestites, people on the street,

By the 1960s she was using a Rolleiflex medium format twin –lens reflex. Providing for a square aspect ratio, higher image resolution (her initial prints in photography showed a fascination of the grain) and she utilized a waist – level viewfinder to connect with her subjects in an unconventional way. She experimented with the use of flashes in daylight, highlighting and separating subjects from background. She was a passionate photographer who would rampage the city despite being weighed down by cameras.

zealots, eccentrics, and

celebrities.

Two ladies at the Automat, 1966

Born Diane Nemerev

To Gertrude and David Nemerov.

Father inherited Russek’s, originally a fur store.

Wealty Jewish family.

Nannies.

Education.

Talented artist.

Longed for understanding.

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

“I want to be a great, sad artist”

Diane Arbus,five, and her beloved brother Howard, eight.

As a child she would stand on the ledge of their eleven story apartment above Central Park, gazing out at the trees and skyscrapers in the distance. “I wanted to see if I could do it. I didn’t inherit my kingdom for a long time.”

“…people think our depravity is only temporary”

Photo taken by Eva Rubenstein, 1971. Diane had given Eva the assignment to “take a picture of something or somebody you’ve never taken before or are afraid or in awe of…”

Diane Arbus committed suicide July, 1971.

“You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.”

For years, individuals with mental retardation were set at the outskirts of society by being placed in state hospitals, poorly maintained residences or foster care homes, experimented on and treated as less than human for differences that were reflected in their social and cultural habits.

Untitled, 1969-1971

Their diverse perception of reality greatly varied from individuals who claim independence in some of the simplest freedoms as providing for oneself.

Untitled, 1969-1971

While these differences set a disabled individual apart from society, there are notable qualities of innocence and unabashed-ness, a lack of self-consciousness, an unfettered acceptance of who they are.

Certainly, it is all these characteristics that attracted Diane Arbus.

Untitled, 1969-1971

"Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.” (Diane Arbus: A Biography, by Patricia Bosworth)

Untitled, 1969-1971

Outsider: one who is not part of a particular group.