When she was beginning her career in fine art photography, controversial American photographer Diane Arbus was asked what it was she wanted to photograph. Her answer? “I want to photograph what is evil.”
Some think Diane Arbus’s photographs did capture what is evil or forbidden --but true-- in all of us. Others believe that her photos captured a strange brand of beauty, instead. But no matter what the viewer feels about the work of Diane Arbus, it rarely happens that he remains emotionally unmoved. Even if the only emotion he feels is revulsion.
Controversial Photographs
Diane Arbus has been called anything from an empty, pretentious pessimist to “one of the most powerful American artists of the 20th century.” During her career, she created some of the most striking images in photography. The intense-eyed boy in suspenders, a toy grenade clutched in one hand, the other forming a bony human claw. The pair of frayed-and-toothless women, mentally disabled and smiling in senseless joy. The “Jewish giant” towering over his parents-- an image which took Arbus over ten years to capture.
Some see these infinitely affecting images as mockeries of the human condition. Others see them as insightful, sympathetic, and beautiful. But whether you love her photographs or want to look away from them, you can’t remain indifferent to the searing reflection of humanity found in Diane Arbus's work.
The Life of “The Photographer of Freaks”
Diane Arbus (then Nemerov) was born in 1923 to a family overflowing with artistic ability. At 14, she fell in love with Allan Arbus, who at the time was 19--the nephew of one of her father’s business partners. The two married in 1941, as soon as Diane was 18.
The pair moved to a Manhattan apartment, had two daughters, and began to see their shared career as commercial photographers take off. After Diane and Allan separated in 1959, Diane Arbus was given her first solo magazine assignment. These first photos were softer and grainer that the ultra-clear, intense photos that would make her famous, she was already striving to capture “the gap between what people are, and what they say they are.”
During her lifetime, Diane Arbus continued to expand her work, building her collection of strange characters. While Arbus was alive, her incredibly affecting photographs were part of museum exhibitions only a handful of times. She only became the phenomenon she is today after 1971, when she lost her life-long struggle with depression and committed suicide.
Diane Arbus once said, “I hated painting and I quit right after high school because I was continually told how terrific I was. I had the sense that if I was so terrific at it, it wasn’t worth doing.” To learn more about this artist --whose struggle to master something she “wasn’t terrific at” resulted in some of the most affecting images in modern art-- visit the Smithsonian Magazine website at the following link: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/
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