Young couple on a bench in Washington Square , 1965
And then, again very simply, there are the photographs: the midgets and giants, the sagging nudists, the middle-aged battle-axes with their pearls and jowls, and most powerfully, seven of the late photographs taken at institutions for the mentally disabled. When Arbus photographs people without external flaws, she often finds the off moment, the odd framing, the disturbing lighting that un-normalizes them. Loser at a diaper derby, N. J. (1967) shows a baby close-up, weeping inconsolably, his fat fists clasped in a keening gesture of mourning, his mother an uncomforting silhouette. It’s a moment of existential loneliness that disturbs the field of cute baby photos. In one of her most iconic images, Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., (1967) two perfectly lovely twin sisters stand so close together that they seem to share an arm. The inner hems of their dresses curve up toward each other, an uncanny symmetry. " -Jenny Dubnau
Involving Herself
'Oh, the photographer?' the man answered. 'She never got very far.' He pointed. She was sitting on the floor with the midgets. 'I don't think she was snapping,' Brown says. 'She was getting involved.'
-Arthur Lubow
Girl in her Circus Costume, Maryland, 1970
Importance
Child Crying, New Jersey, 1967
For me the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And more complicated. I do have a feeling for the print but I don' have a holy feeling for it. I really think what it is, is what it's about. I mean it has to be of something. And what it's of is always more remarkable than what it is. "
-Diane Arbus
Posing
Arbus posed her subjects looking directly into the camera, just as she looked directly at them. She said, "I don't like to arrange things; I arrange myself." For her, the subject was always more important than the picture. She firmly believed that there were things which nobody would see unless she photographed them. Arbus created photo essays of these subjects which she sold to magazines such as Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, and Infinity. "