A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C., 1966

Diane Arbus was an American photographer whose work captured 1950s and 1960s America and transformed the art of photography. She was born in New York City and found most of her subjects there. Arbus worked to normalize marginalized groups and highlight the importance of properly representing all people. She worked with a wide range of subjects, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, strippers, carnival performers, nudists, dwarfs, children, mothers, couples, elderly people, and middle-class families. She photographed her subjects in familiar settings: their homes, on the street, at work, and in the park. “She is known for expanding notions of acceptable subject matter and challenging the established norms regarding the appropriate distance between photographer and subject. By befriending, rather than objectifying, her subjects, she was able to capture a rare psychological intensity in her work.” Diane Arbus first began taking photographs in the early 1940s. While working alongside her husband, Allan Arbus, as a stylist in their fashion photography business, she continued to take photographs on her own. She studied photography with Berenice Abbott in the 1940s and with Alexey Brodovitch in the mid-1950s. It was at Lisette Model’s photographic workshop around 1956, however, that Arbus found inspiration and began seriously pursuing the work for which she has become known. She was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1963 and 1966 for her project on “American Rites, Manners, and Customs.”