Diane Arbus, 1923-1971 - American photographer of Jewish origin. Aperture magazine's catalog of Arbus's work is one of the best-selling in the history of photography.
Diane Arbus was born on March 14, 1923 into the Nemerov Jewish family. Her parents, Russian emigrants, were engaged in the sale fur products under the Russeks brand, they ran a company store where, in addition to furs, they also presented counterfeits of famous fashion brands– Chanel, Christian Dior.
In the 1930s, Diana attended the School of Ethical Culture, and a little later, the Fieldston School, where her talents for the visual arts were first noticed.
These talents were encouraged in every possible way by Diana's father: he specifically asked Russeks' personal illustrator, Dorothy Thompson, to regularly work with Diana. Miss Thompson studied art at the courses of the famous Berlin artist, graphic artist and caricaturist Georg Gross; Later, Arbus more than once confessed her love for his work. In 1937, Diana met the future actor Allan Arbus and immediately expressed a desire to marry him. In order to prevent this, Diana's parents send her in 1938 to summer courses at Cummington School of Art.
The young rebel finds a way to get rid of the influence of her parents - marriage. In 1941 she becomes Diane Arbus. In Allan, the young girl found not only a caring husband, but also a mentor and a loyal friend. It was her husband who introduced her to the world of photography, gave her her first camera and taught her the subtleties that he himself knew.
In 1946, the young couple opened the Diane and Allan Arbus fashion photography studio.
Under the influence and help of her husband, Diana became a fashion photographer in 1946: she received her first orders from her father, who partially helped finance their photographic equipment. In 1947, the couple were introduced to the management of the publishing house Condé Nast: here they were tasked with making a series of photographs about pullovers for Vogue and Glamor magazines.
In 1957, after Diana's nervous breakdown, the couple stopped working together. Allan continues to film in the studio, and Diana is looking for herself. They remain friends, but decided to divorce in 1969 when Allan wanted to marry again...
Diana manages to catch her wave by attending photography courses by Lisette Model, who suggested “photography of the extreme.” Then she goes to New York drag queen clubs.
She wandered the streets, looking for unusual people or unusual things in ordinary people. Her first models were freaks, transvestites, hermaphrodites, prostitutes, nudists, the mentally ill, and twins.
A child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, New York, 1962.
The famous writer Norman Mailer, after seeing Arbus's first works, said: "Giving Arbus a camera is like letting a child play with a grenade."
In the decade between 1960 and until her death in 1971, Diane Arbus earned her living primarily as a freelance photographer for various magazines. There were no other opportunities to make money from photography at that time: museums and galleries of that era had not yet discovered this art form as profitable and of public interest.
Arbus was greatly influenced by Todd Browning's film Freaks (1932), rediscovered in 1961 after a long period of oblivion, which starred circus performers with extreme physical disabilities alongside regular actors. Subsequently, Arbus made significant efforts to get to know such people, gain their trust and consent to pose for photo shoots.
Gemini, New Jersey 1967
Suicide spurred interest in Diana's work, and it was after her death that she gained worldwide fame. Her photographs are still exhibited in various museums, at the most popular exhibitions and biennials. An album of her works, released in 1972, went through more than 10 reissues, a kind of record. Her photograph “Identical Twins” is still considered one of the most expensive in the world: in 2004 it was bought for 478,400 US dollars.
In 2006, the biographical film about Diane Arbus “Fur” was released with the participation of Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. The film, with a budget of $12 million, was released in limited release in the United States on November 10, 2006. The film never appeared in Russian cinemas and was released immediately on DVD.
Diane Arbus
American photographer. Born in 1923 into the Jewish Nemerov family in New York. He begins to study photography as a fashion photographer, shooting for Vogue and Glamor magazines. She often works in tandem with her husband Allan Arbus. In 1971 he committed suicide, and a year later, in 1972, the New York Museum contemporary art opens an exhibition of her works, which is visited by more than 7 million spectators. Aperture magazine's catalog of Arbus's work is one of the best-selling in the history of photography.
Exhibition
I'm at the Met-Breuer Museum. The elevator door opens, revealing a large space with dim lighting. A year ago, this place was the Whitney Museum of American Art, but in 2015, the Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue was occupied by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met Breuer began its life with a blockbuster exhibition, Diane Arbus: In the Beginning, a display of one hundred photographs by America's most enigmatic photographer.
The hall is packed with visitors. Tuesday morning. Arbus's works hang on gray columns. The crowd waltzes from photograph to photograph. The internal tension in the photographs suggests its rhythm. The columns divide and fragment the room, turning it into a labyrinth. I sit down on a bench against the wall and watch what is happening with interest. “It’s like a performance,” the man sitting next to me says of the audience sliding from photograph to photograph. There is silence in the hall. WITH black and white photographs The New York people of the 60s of the last century are looking at us with their eyes bulging. I think that a lot has changed here, but the spirit of the city remains the same. Freaks, losers, tired and broken people who lost the fight with life, forever captured on film by the keen eye of Arbus, are still an organic part of the social fabric of this city.
New York people of the 60s of the last century look at us from black and white photographs, their eyes bulging.
Start
I can easily imagine a little girl walking with a French nanny in Central Park. The girl holds Bonna’s hand, she bends down and explains something to the child. This is exactly how the life of little Diana Nemerov began, with walks in Central Park and life in a large apartment on Park Avenue. Arbus biographer Arthur Lubof, describing the life of the family in which Arbus grew up, seems to be surprised by himself: “The Nemerov family, including Diana’s parents, older brother and younger sister, lived in huge apartments with many rooms, draped with heavy curtains that turned the lighting in the apartment at constant twilight. Living in this safe nest, the Nemerovs needed the help of three nannies, two maids, a cook and a driver.”
The Nemerovs became rich thanks to a successful marriage. Arbus's mother Gertrude Russek was the daughter of a wealthy businessman, a native of Poland, Frank Russek. Having emigrated to America, Russek engaged in trade and succeeded so much that in 1922 he opened his own store on the prestigious Fifth Avenue. Russex, a luxury merchant, had embarrassed Arbus since childhood. This is how she recalled visits to her grandfather’s store: “I was like a princess in a disgusting film about a forgotten Eastern European country, like Transylvania.”
Place
Arbus is a troubadour and chronicler of New York's wild side, the fragmentation of life, the eternal clowning.
Predecessors and successors
Arbus's early themes - Big city, little people. Strange, random and tragic. Many people worked this way: Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Bruce Davidson. However, if you study the work of these photographers closely, you will find that the tragic in Arbus is real, devoid of sentimentality, and the “accidental” is not at all accidental.
Thanks to a friend who knows New York and has a great understanding of art, I heard the story of the famous portrait “Boy with a Grenade.” This photograph is not included in the “portfolio of ten”, but is considered one of Diana’s canonical works. Having learned about my interest in Arbus’s work, a friend sent me a short text, thanks to which Arbus’s city photography reveals itself in a completely different way:
“I dated the guy who is depicted in the Arbus photograph “Boy with a Grenade.” His name is Colin. He was walking with his nanny in Central Park. Arbus spent a whole film on him, and then chose one shot of him grimacing. There was a war in Vietnam, and the image of a child with a plastic grenade took on a different meaning.”
In "The Boy with a Grenade" Arbus breaks with street photography, with her predecessors and mentors. She becomes herself. Arbus is an artist who creates archetypes. A boy in the park, tired of Diana’s fuss with the camera, shouted: “Take it!” - and, without suspecting it, he was embodied in an eternal image. He, today happily living the life of a wealthy New Yorker, had no idea how his innocent play with a plastic grenade in the park could be interpreted in the 60s. What is this photo about? About many things. About impatience. Violence. War. Hysteria.
Ten photos
In one of the interviews, Arbus says a phrase that has become key for me in understanding her work: “the gap between the desired and the effect produced.” What did Arbus mean? The best example her portfolio of ten photographs could serve as a guide.
“A Box of Ten Photographs” is Arbus’s creative testament. So what's there? Medium format photographs selected by Arbus herself from thousands of images taken over the photographer's long career. Ten frames that, like a knife, can wound, pierce, and remain in the memory forever. At the Arbus exhibition at the Met Breuer, the portfolio is displayed in a separate room and produces a stunning effect. Never before have works of art filled me with such sadness and melancholy. People who perished long ago in the furnace of time are looking at us. Losers, strange, detached, perplexed, vacationers, protesters, young, old.
“Portfolio of Ten Photographs” is Arbus’s creative testament.
Street. The young guy is dressed in a suit and holds an American flag in his right hand. A simple face under a straw hat. White shirt and bow tie. The 60s, but the boy is dressed completely out of fashion. Patriotic, conservative, trying to look older than his age. The photo makes you smile until an inquisitive eye begins to read the phrases on the badges attached to the tails of a wrinkled suit. "God bless America. Support our guys in Vietnam” on one and “Bomb Hanoi” on the other. This phrase, enclosed in a white circle, is “punctum, prick,” a dot that makes this seemingly simple photograph a masterpiece. The boy thinks that he looks like an adult, like a real patriot, like a person capable of influencing the political processes in the country, but as soon as we look closely at this lop-eared face on a thin neck, it becomes clear that before us is a classic example of a “gap between the desired and the effect produced."
The underground world that Arbus would glorify, and which would glorify Arbus herself, emerged in her photographs through her work at Esquire magazine. The first assignment she received at the editorial office was to photograph the morgue of the Bellevue Hospital on 29th Street. After the morgue, Arbus's works include Manhattan flophouses, brothels, shabby and suspicious hotels, strip shows and other exotic nightlife of the New York bottom. These hundreds of films will become the foundation on which the photographer will build his masterpiece, the “Portfolio of Ten Photographs.”
This is Eddie Carmel, the Jewish giant, with his parents in the living room of their Bronx home, 1970
Code
Sunny New York day. I think about Arbus as I sit on the playground curb. Or rather, I'm talking about Arbus with New York photographer Harvey Wang. Our children are kicking a soccer ball. We are parents given an hour to talk about art.
— I started taking photographs thanks to Arbus. I saw “Portfolio of Ten Photos” and realized that it was mine.
I drink bitter coffee from a cardboard cup.
“You know, only three or four people bought this portfolio during their lifetime.” Avedon was one of them,” Harvey says, smiling.
I smile too. Harvey and I realize that only a few people have been able to guess the future meaning of Arbus. But sometimes three people are enough.
- Only three or four customers, can you imagine? - Harvey repeats.
“No, I really can’t,” I answer.
History, as we know, is made by people and captured by photographers. Gloss, glamor, and creative delights are characteristic of a true master who is looking for his own path in photography. Diane Arbus is one of the most famous personalities who was popular throughout the world during her time. The work of an American woman of Russian-Jewish origin, who passed away in the aura of her glory, is still disputed and is the subject of discussion in the best secular and Western cultural institutions.
Who is D. Arbus
For many generations, the mystery woman never parted with her camera for almost a minute. She was interested the world, the people living in it, their feelings, actions and thoughts, she conveyed in her photographs. The works of Diane Arbus tell about unusual people belonging to various subcultures.
The woman’s skill reached perfection, acquired its own sophisticated style and completely rejected the glamor and artificial gloss of the United States after the war. Many admire the independent and strong Diane Arbus. The photographer's biography is full of various events, happy and tragic.
Birth
The future star of photography was born into a simple Jewish family in 1923. The Nemerovs were emigrants from cold Russia, among many other people who fled the country. They found their permanent refuge in the New York quarter, where Diana’s grandfather already lived, having arrived earlier with his Russian lover, contrary to the wishes of his relatives.
My parents were never poor. In the States, they opened their own business and became the owners of a store that sold fur goods. Housekeeping and running a business took up the free time of parents, which was not left for raising and educating their children. Therefore, the girl, brother and sister were raised by governesses. The parents became concerned and found nannies for the children. Since childhood, Diane Arbus had a special way of thinking and a creative view of the world around her.
Growing up and first love
From an early age, the girl was distinguished by her rebellion and insubordination to established views. After graduating from the School of Ethical Culture, she entered the Fieldston School, where her interest in the arts began. Diane Arbus looked at people in a special way. Personal life famous photographer has always interested fans.
The girl caught up with her at the age of 13, and she immediately hurried to tell her parents that she was marrying acting student Alan Arbus. The prospect of her daughter's marriage did not please her father and mother, and they decided to send her to Cummington School. But all in vain, contrary to her parents’ will, Diana became a wife in 1941 and took her husband’s surname.
The failed young actor was forced to leave his cherished career and get a job in order to feed his young family. His position was far from art; he began selling in neighboring shops.
Shared hobby
Two years later, the young man decided to study photography and took an army service course. He began to involve his beloved in the work, giving her a camera.
Some time later, the couple took over the Allan and Diane Arbus fashion photography studio in the capital. The young people divided their professional commitments. The man began technical processing of photographs, developing photographs, and printing.
The girl completely plunged into life artistic photography. So she began to manage the studio. Successful solidarity work began to cause controversy. Each of them shared their point of view and defended it. Alan believed that the work should be based on the trend of photographs that were fashionable at that time, their color, angle, and harsh lighting. Diane Arbus, whose photos were recognized as real and alive, began to look for interesting ideas filled with various contents.
The gap that influenced the work of Arbus Diana
After a few months, the routine and gray monotonous life of the studio became boring for the young woman. Promotional fashion trends and other directions did not interest her. In the 60s, a husband and wife decided to close their brainchild. After two years they separated forever.
Diana spent months searching for her place in the field of photography. After meeting Lisette Model, they began to get involved in a new direction together. A turn of creative destiny took shape in the life of the future master. It was at that time that Diane Arbus found her style in art, which still excites the feelings of many generations.
She wandered the streets of the night city, looked at the everyday life of people in their professional activity, watched children running through puddles, feeding pigeons. The life of ordinary Americans interested the master. So in her creative life included prostitutes, transvestites, freaks with developmental anomalies, and nudists.
Diana did not like to build characters, as other photographers did. She photographed them in everyday poses and did not ask them to pose. Therefore, in the photo everything looks natural and simple. Pompousness cannot be found in any of the works. Diane Arbus tried to show the true world. Photos of her works can now be seen in many galleries around the world.
The preparation of the angle, the plot, the background and the placement of objects were all irritating and against her nature. She called the freaks “aristocrats,” since they passed a life test at their birth and growing up. Art critics quickly noticed the rising star. Some admired her work, others rejected her completely. But there were no indifferent spectators.
Fame all over the world
In the 60s, the works were presented in the halls of the New York Museum of Modern Art. Photographs began to appear in prestigious magazines of that decade. Recognition as the famous best master of photography came to Diana once and for all.
But, like many creative people, Arbus began to have thoughts of suicide on the creative Olympus. She decides to take a large dose of barbiturate, opening her veins at the same time. In addition, she suffered for many years from the consequences of hepatitis, fell into depression, and suffered from severe and prolonged headaches.
Suicide
Photographer Diane Arbus spent the final years of her life taking pills in apathy and dissatisfaction with her work. She was under pressure from disappointment and oppression.
The death was incomprehensible and strange to everyone, although it was assumed that the woman suffered from schizophrenia. She died on July 26, 1971, the woman was 48 years old. After her death, Diane Arbus became famous for her work in Canada and Europe. Many essays and books are dedicated to her, and a feature film was made telling the biography of the photographer. Every fan of her work should definitely watch the movie “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus” (2006).
Photography: www.phototour.pro
"Portfolio" is ten photographs taken from 1963 to 1970, which Diane Arbus herself selected in 1970 from thousands of her photographs. A year after this, she opened her veins by swallowing barbiturates; her body was found in the bathtub two days later. It is believed that severe bouts of depression occurred throughout her life and intensified in the late 60s after suffering from hepatitis. Looking at these photographs, it is easy to imagine a woman tormented by her own and others’ imperfections, but Arbus was not always like this.
She was born into a wealthy family, went to good school, her parents encouraged her Creative skills. Even when, against their will, she married a penniless peer, Allan Arbus, the couple did not have to rely on random orders for long. Already in the late 40s, Diana and her husband began to make a living by photographing for magazines. They were a sought-after couple - a photographer husband and a stylist wife, but their Team work stopped in 1957 after another nervous breakdown.
In the early 60s, Diane Arbus began to look for her own style. Around this time, the banned 1932 film Freaks, about the tragic love of a circus midget for a beautiful but evil gymnast, was released. This film instantly became a cult film - largely because it starred real participants in circus performances of the 30s - the microcephalic Schlitzi, the artist without arms and legs Prince Randian, the bearded woman Lady Olga, the Siamese twins Daisy and Violetta Hilton, and many others " freaks,” as they were called then. In the film, circus life was shown with the necessary degree of conventionality, but completely unretouched: the dwarfs made fun of the sex life of Siamese twins, they laughed it off dispassionately, and at the same time a man without arms and legs rolled himself a cigarette with his lips alone. The film was banned in the 1930s for its excessive violence - in particular, for the ending, in which a crowd of circus "freaks" turns an evil gymnast into a bird woman. It is known that Arbus watched this film, and it literally influenced her: she created the most “normal” photographs of people with disabilities and the most abnormal photographs of “normal” people.
In recent years, Diane Arbus was called a “photographer of freaks,” to which she reacted extremely painfully. If you look at the photographs that she selected for her portfolio, you can see that it was not ugliness that occupied her, but dissonance. The family of Richard and Marilyn Dauria at first glance is ordinary: a mother with a baby in her arms, and a father holding his son’s hand - only the son has an unnaturally wide smile and eyes slanted to one point. The attempt to keep up appearances makes this family both touching and frightening. Even more controversial feelings are caused by a photo of the king and queen of a dance competition for senior citizens. The fake crowns have slid to one side, the robes are awkwardly wrapped, elegant gifts are in their hands, but on the faces of this couple is written the desire to quickly tear off all these ridiculous attributes in which they resemble jesters. Fatigue and torment are written on the man’s face, he desperately clutches the “royal” cane in his hand, and the woman seems completely confused. The photograph of the giant Eddie Carmel looks more funny than tragic - the giant stands crouched next to his parents, like Gulliver next to the Lilliputians. Arbus herself said that in this photograph she captured her mother’s horror at her creation. Eddie Carmel died at the age of 36, and before that he made money performing circus performances under the pseudonym The Jewish Giant. However, even the giant does not make such a frightening impression as the smiling twin girls, one of Arbus's most famous photographs. These are not Siamese twins, not dwarfs, the girls are healthy and pose calmly, but looking at them is truly scary. It's probably no coincidence that identically dressed girls were used in Kubrick's The Shining as one of the most frightening images.
Considering that about a year after these ten photographs were selected, Diane Arbus committed suicide, the selection can be seen as her attempt to deal with her internal contradictions. Physically handicapped people, idyllic family scenes in which a subtle flaw has crept in, frightening children, portraits of transvestites and circus performers who perform everyday life, like all “normal” people - these can all be considered reflections of approaching madness. However, it is unlikely that Diane Arbus glorified the ugliness of madness; rather, she was fascinated by her heroes: “many people live in fear that something terrible might happen to them. “Freaks” were born with their own trauma. They passed this test. They are aristocrats." The most self-sufficient people in Arbus' photographs are dwarf Lauro Morales and burlesque dancer Blaze Starr. Although they are among the outcasts of decent society, they are not at all embarrassed by their peculiarity, and do not look either creepy or pitiful. Their portraits, along with other photographs from Diane Arbus’s portfolio, received full recognition only after her death. The first photographs to appear at the Venice Biennale were those of Arbus.
“You can’t just come up and ask a person to talk about their life. People try to protect themselves, but a camera is a kind of pass.”
Diane Arbus
The famous American photographer Diane Arbus did not like being called a master of photographing freaks. However, she went down in history, first of all, as one of the first photographers who knew how to photograph people with physical disabilities.
Having started her career as a fashion photographer, Diana did not immediately plunge into marginal aesthetics, but became its “voice” and was able to express her strange attractiveness, repulsive and magnetic at the same time.
Perhaps this unexplored and somewhat taboo area found a response in the author herself, who also did not have conformist views on life. The ability to be different from others brought Diane Arbus success, albeit mostly posthumous. The first photographs were exhibited by the photographer at the Venice Biennale. Despite their controversial aesthetics, they helped Diane Arbus become one of the most important figures in American and world documentary photography.
Arbus influenced many people working beyond the photography genre (for example, there are references to her visual statements in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining). Experts believe that the key moment that sparked her interest in the marginalized world was the half-forgotten 1930s film Freaks. The film, shot by Tod Browning, which at one time caused sharp public rejection, returned from obscurity in the early 60s as a poignant artistic statement and completely coincided with the theme of interest to Diana - a violation of the established and expected order of things.
Arbus cannot be considered exclusively a master of photographing deviance - the specificity of her talent lies in the ability to find the frightening and scary, repulsive and anomalous in completely average scenes. At the same time, Diana photographed freaks, physically extraordinary people and other social outsiders in a completely ordinary setting, emphasizing their humanity, but at the same time constant internal tension. With her works, Arbus emphasized the totalitarian nature of customary norms, their cruelty and limitations.
Photo style of Diane Arbus - psychology, documentary and deep insight into internal conflict
As a photographer, Diane Arbus was influenced by film noir, popular in Europe and the United States in the 30s and 40s. XX century - she was born in 1923 and grew up in an atmosphere of a radically changing artistic paradigm. Her concept traces the style of the New York school; she actively used technical techniques that were fashionable at the time - direct shooting with its natural composition and emotional intensity, working in a reportage setting rather than in a studio, frontal staging, and so on. Diana's centered manner is emphasized by her technique - the photographer used a Rolleiflex camera more than others, enlarging the negatives to 60-60 mm to make all the details voluminous.
In terms of the content of her works, Arbus can be compared with Brassaï, but she is distinguished by a special psychological depth. Diana never forced her extraordinary models to pose; she gave them enough time to get used to the situation and the camera, and tried to truly understand them. Maybe that’s why she was able to express so well the uniqueness and internal conflicts of the special people she met and photographed. She didn’t shoot right away, she asked people to talk about themselves and, to some extent, she was close to them in spirit - Diana, who was just as emotionally distant from society and had difficulty being accepted by it, could understand how her models felt.
She began filming only after a conversation with a person, sometimes revealing completely unexpected things. For example, famous photograph“The Jewish Giant and His Parents” emphasizes not the strangeness of Eddie Carmel with his enormous height, but the confusion of his mother and father, who stood helplessly before “their creation.”
Others worldwide famous works Diana - a boy with a toy grenade in his hand and twin sisters - generally depict ordinary children, but through the prism of the artist's view. Particularly famous is the portrait of girls in identical dark dresses, which impressed Stanley Kubrick himself (and he knew a lot about visual tools to intimidate the audience). The portrait remains an iconic horror image to this day, almost a modern example.
Despite her inner magnifying glass, which could highlight frightening details, Diana was not a destructive anarchist who wanted to paint the world black, although many authorities accused her of this, in particular Susan Sontag, the confrontation with whom became one of the most serious artistic conflicts in twentieth century photography.
Marginal images cannot be considered exclusively destructive, because the one-dimensionality of the norm harms art. The most self-sufficient people in her photographs are dwarfs and other people who are different from others, but the “ordinary” models in the photographs often look confused and unhappy. This emphasis on "confrontation" is a key characteristic of Arbus's work.
Creative path, searches and posthumous recognition
Born into a wealthy family of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Diana lived throughout her childhood in New York's privileged Greenwich Village, raised by a nanny (her brother and sister had their own governesses) and attended a reputable Ivy League school. However, already with adolescence she began to cause trouble for her parents, although her father encouraged and developed her artistic talent. The girl took painting lessons and attended courses at an art school, but at the age of 18 (in 1941), wanting to get rid of obsessive guardianship, she married aspiring actor Allan Arbus. The young man turned out to be a responsible husband. He gave up his career, became a salesman, and then took up photography, while working hard in two places at the same time. This bore fruit - already from the late 40s, the couple's studio (Diana worked actively with her husband) became popular.
In 1947, the couple's first works appeared in key American fashion publications - Vogue and Glamor. The staged photography, in which the husband was responsible for the technical component, and the wife for the gloomy noir conceptual “foundation”, brought success to the couple, but it did not reassure Diana. She painfully searched for her own style, because internal tension began to suffer from depression and nervous breakdowns, and in 1957 she separated from her husband. They communicated closely, raised two daughters together (they were born in 1945 and 1954) and divorced only in the late 60s.
Having started her independent work, Diana plunged into experiments on the border with extreme art and in 1961 she saw those very “Freaks” - a film about a circus dwarf who fell in love with a beautiful gymnast. This was the final touch to her vision - in the decade she had left (she committed suicide in 1971 by drinking barbiturates and cutting her veins in the bathroom), she created her most significant work.
For contemporaries they turned out to be too radical - during her lifetime Diana had only one major exhibition at MOMA, although the Guggenheim Museum and reputable publications worked with her and she was a recognized master. Disappointments, depression and hepatitis suffered in the late 60s led to a nervous breakdown and a tragic outcome.
After Diana's death, her first personal exhibition took place - in 1972 it was organized by the Museum of Modern Art. Aperture, one of the private foundations, published a monograph of the photographer, which is now one of the best-selling photography books in the world. The photographic work with twin girls, Identical Twins, ranks sixth among the most expensive photographs on the planet (it was last sold for almost half a million dollars). In 2006, based on the life of the photographer, a film was released with Hollywood stars of the first magnitude. "Fur" stars Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. Today, Diane Arbus's conceptual approach is recognized throughout the world, although her works never cease to amaze, frighten and be remembered - like everything new, unusual and ingenious.
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