It was not until the 1950s that she began to work seriously on her personal interests, after studying with the Austrian photographer Lisette Model, an experience that transformed her work.

Often placing her sitters in the centre of the picture frame, Arbus intensified the sense of interaction and collaboration between her and the subjects she sought out.

In 1962 Arbus began using a 2 ¼ inch twin-lens Rolleiflex camera and developed a distinctively frontal, square-format portraiture. She became drawn to people who worked at, and visited, the amusement parks in Palisades Park and Coney Island, representatives of a subculture or underworld that remained a rich source of fascination for her. She worked in many locations around New York, and followed in the tradition of American street photography, candidly photographing her surroundings with a 35mm camera. In the late 1950s Arbus experimented with different techniques and sought out projects that interested her. The resulting portraits are bold and frank, but they also reflect the level of trust that Arbus worked hard to establish with her subjects, creating a complex, collaborative relationship that underpins the images.Īrbus was born in New York in 1923, and began in a partnership with her husband, Allan Arbus, in the 1940s, working for fashion magazines such as Glamour and Vogue. Her distinctive approach is marked by the directness of her portraiture, and by her ability to find the familiar in the strange, and discover the unusual in the ordinary.Īrbus undertook ‘to photograph everybody', including circus performers, transvestites, nudists and people with learning disabilities.

Diane Arbus is one of the most significant photographers of the twentieth century, an influential figure whose honest style of photography paved the way for the work of many contemporary photographers and artists.

Diane Arbus by Marvin Israel