Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus – A sensitive prisoner in a golden cage

Diane Arbus was born Diane Nemerov in New York City on 14 March 1923. Her life really stood under an auspicious star; her family were wealthy, owning a fur and fashion store on 5th Avenue. Diane had a particularly close relationship with her brother, the well-known writer Howard Nemerov, whilst her sister Renée also made a name for herself later as a sculptor. Staff took care of the children’s upbringing, and despite their great affluence, almost the whole family was prone to depression. Diane Arbus’ artistic talent was recognised early and encouraged by her father David Nemerov – when she fell in love at the age of fifteen with the photographer Allan Arbus, an employee of her family’s business, and desired to marry him, she was quickly sent to a distant art school. Diane got her own way however and became Arbus’s wife and assistant. Together they photographed the glamorous fashion world – a milieu whose noncommittal perfection soon bored the artist.

To photograph what no one else sees

Diane Arbus wanted more, was interested in the abysses which she often sensed in herself. To the same degree that she alienated herself from her husband and his glittering motifs, she felt drawn towards the shadows of her hometown of New Nork. The great pain she suffered over the separation from her great love Allan Arbus drove her out of her comfort zone and into the outsider milieus of human society. Nudists, prostitutes, the deformed, artistes, transvestites, the intellectually disabled: they were not staged aesthetically by Diane Arbus, but captured in unaffected directness in a rare mix of intimacy and distance. Her targets were morgues, psychiatric clinics, slums and travesty shows. She simply went where she had never been, Arbus once said later, she wanted to photograph that which nobody would have seen without her photographs. The result was shocking and a provocation for the audience who often felt overwhelmed by the reality shown. The famous American writer Norman Mailer is reported to have said that a camera in the hands of Diane Arbus was similarly unpredictable and dangerous as a live hand grenade in the hands of a child.

Self-destructive longing for misery

Diane Arbus located the roots of her fascination for unseen misery in her own happy childhood precisely because this feeling of pain and despair had been foreign to her. Her happiness had awakened the longing for misery, the artist claimed. Her unembellished view of the centre of horror brought an enormous boost in reputation to the mother of two daughters: Diane Arbus was the first female photographer to present her work at the Venice Biennale. Despite such great recognition bestowed on her work, the ambitious artist was unable to live from the profits of her work. This situation intensified the depression she had suffered since childhood and she committed suicide on 26 July 1972.