She had always been a melancholic and subject to depressions, and in 1968 caught hepatitis. Her thirty pictures in that show were the big attraction, but even so she was downcast at the idea that she was classified as a photographer of ‘freaks’ and ‘weirdos’ – ‘Diane Arbus is the wizard of odds!’ Even though recognized she was by no means established, and the ‘freaks’ epithet troubled her. She does well, or well enough to take the stage with Winogrand and Friedlander at MOMA in Szarkowski’s New Documents exhibition of 1967. In 1959 she was taken up by Marvin Israel, ‘my svengali’, according to the Bosworth biography – although the term does come to mind unbidden. She drifted into photography, which, in the 1950’s, was very much a man’s world: Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Gary Winogrand, all patrons of The Limelight café where ‘She’d never say a word – she’d just listen and then suddenly you’d look up and she’d be gone.’ Eventually she found a mentor: Lisette Model, a survivor from pre-war Europe, and even then something of a legend. She was a devoted mother, but was also attracted to the Bohemian sub-cultures of the big city – New York, which she never like to leave. She married young and had a family, which took up most of her time. She came from a privileged background and for a long time knew nothing of the world. She was, from most of the evidence, beautiful. It is surely only a question of time before the Diane Arbus story becomes an opera. Her women and girls are invariably strong-like the confident twins -and her men are frequently damaged or uncomfortable in their surroundings.For Issue 5 of Photoworks Magazine, Ian Jeffrey reviewed the Diane Arbus Show Revelations at the Victoria & Albert museum, London. Indeed, it may well be her assumption of this prerogative of masculine domination that has attracted much of the negative comment, compounded by her undercutting of gender stereotypes. In her aggressive, full frontal 'exploitation' of her subjects, Arbus appropriated an essentially male convention: that of staring. Furthermore, her exploration of normalcy was complicated by gender issues. While it is true that she often photographed those outside society's norms, a more pertinent observation is that if she made 'normals' look like 'freaks', she also made 'freaks' look like 'normals'. It is that, but it also a brilliant exposé of American life. Edited by Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel, its titled implies a mere trawl through her best-known images. 'Published just after her untimely death in 1971, this book-whether or not aided by the artist's notoriety-has achieved massive sales for a volume of such uncompromising photographs.

Doon arbus and marvin israel