Diane Arbus stood out amongst her photographer peers during the last century, renowned for her creepy portraiture and weird choice of subjects. Born in New York, NY on 14 March, 1923, as Diane Nemerov her talents as an artist began at an early age, drawing and painting interesting items while still at school. On her 1941 marriage to Allan Arbus, he undertook to teach her photography.
Working with him, Diane began her photographic career doing advertising photography, as well as fashion work, becoming a successful pair, their work appeared in magazines like Vogue.
In the fifties, Diane branched out on her own, studying with Lisette Model. She began snapping pics of the people of New York, finding her subjects in run-down hotels, parks, and even a morgue. Her eclectic choice of subjects emitted a quality of rawness that saw her photos appearing in a mid-1960 of Esquire, which set her on her road to fame.
Her work appeared in New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the sixties, and she was relentless in ensuring she got the pics she wanted, developing friendships with the famous in the photographic world such as Richard Avedon and Walker Evans.
But, at her peak in the late sixties, her world began to crumble with a divorce in 1969 and the onset of depression, resulting in her suicide in 1971, but her fame remained, even to the extent of a film, Fur made in 2006, being based on her life, which starred Nicole Kidman playing Arbus.
