Diane Arbus

A box of 10 photographs

Photographs by Diane Arbus are often characterized by their unapologetic sense of directness. Her subjects typically stare straight into her camera lens, starkly contrasted in their chosen environments by Arbus’s camera flash. The artist produced portraits and roomscapes in this style throughout the 1960s, a handful of which are represented in this portfolio. Her subjects included children, nudists, drag performers, and carnival entertainers; or those often seen at the “fringe” of mainstream society in New York City. Critics received her works in a myriad of ways: some found the images grotesque and disingenuous; others, uncannily intimate. Nevertheless, Arbus’s relationship to her sitters and their surroundings relied on a reciprocal stare, a perceived exchange between subject and photographer. The photographer once stated: “For me the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And more complicated.”