I was first introduced to the work of Diane Arbus when I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York a few years ago. Her photos stood out among the other contemporary photographers because of the eccentric nature of the subjects. Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was a twentieth century photographer. According to the magazine Art in America, Arbus was born to a wealthy Jewish family from New York City. Diane married Allan Arbus at age 18 and worked as a commercial photographer, shooting photographs for fashion magazines and advertisements. She left the world of commercial photography to pursue her personal work. Arbus used a 35mm camera to take pictures all over New York, including Coney Island, carnivals, circuses, dressing rooms of female impersonators, and people in the streets.
After Arbus began studying at The New School in 1962, her work changed dramatically. Using a 2 ¼ inch twin lens reflex camera to take square portraits, her subjects were members of underground subcultures. They included nudists, transvestites, and people of varying sexual orientations. She took pictures of marginalized people, outcasts of society. They were circus freaks, dwarfs, and people with mental and physical deformities (as seen in the picture below entitled “A Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents in the Bronx, N.Y.” ). 
Her black and white photos have a minimalistic style and have backgrounds that are usually sparse so that the focus is on the subjects themselves. The subjects are usually starring straight into the lens (as seen with the picture below, entitled “A Young Man in Curlers at Home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C.”).
After I saw Diane Arbus’ work at the MOMA, I was trying to figure out what made her work so intriguing and then I realized that her photographs are not necessarily pretty pictures. Her subjects are people that we would avoid looking at if we were walking down the street, certainly not the ideal subjects for “fine art”. But Arbus is not trying to make her photographs into fine art. Instead, she challenges viewers to see beauty in unconventional places.
I find Arbus’ work appealing because even today the subject matter of marginalized people expressed in her photos would be considered radical. I think Arbus intended for the subjects to be more intriguing and telling than the pictures themselves. There are things that people would never see if Diane Arbus didn’t photograph them.
Work Cited:
Rubinfien, Leo. “Where Diane Arbus Went.” Art in America. October 2005: 65.
