Diane Arbus

American, 1923-1971. Born Diane Nemerov on March 24, 1923 to a wealthy New York family, the now famed American photographer, Diane Arbus pursued her interest in the arts beginning at a young age. It wasn’t until 1941, while visiting Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery with her husband Allan Arbus in 1941 that she began pursuing photography. During the mid-1940s, the married couple succeeded in a joint photography venture that contributed to Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. However, by the 1950s, Diane Arbus moved away from commercial work and began documenting the streets of New York, eventually leading to her groundbreaking portraits, often depicting those on the fringe of society including the mentally ill, transgender people, and circus performers. Having struggled depression throughout her life, Arbus committed suicide on July 26, 1971 at the age of 48. In 1972, a year after her death, the first major retrospective of Arbus’ work took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her works are a part of renowned collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.

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