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Two ladies walking in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1963
Woman with eyeliner, NYC, 1967/2003
Seated man in a bra and stockings, N.Y.C., 1967
Girl in a coat lying on her bed, N.Y.C.
Wax Museum Strangler, Coney Island, NY, 1972
Woman on the Street with Her Eyes Closed
Unmarked recto; stamped verso, upper left, in black ink: "Not to be reproduced in any way without written permission from Doon Arbus."; stamped and inscribed verso, upper center, in black ink: "Copyright © 19 [stamped] 86 [inscribed] / The Estate of Diane Arbus [stamped]"; stamped and inscribed verso, upper right, in black ink: "a diane arbus print [stamped] # 5B-6A-1U-1114 [inscribed] / doon arbus administrator [stamped] doon arbus [inscribed]"
Two Ladies at the Automat (New York City)
Just two years before she received her first camera, Diane Arbus wrote: “There are and have been and will be an infinite number of things on Earth. Individuals all different, all wanting different things, all knowing different things, all loving different things, all looking different… . That is what I love: the differentness.” Arbus’s appreciation for the unusual, eccentric, and extraordinary led her to photograph a range of subjects over the thirty years of her career—transvestites, giants, art philanthropists, nudists, and, as here, similarly dressed and made-up women. These ladies, with their cigarettes poised in one hand and lighters clutched in the other, occupy a booth in a New York City automat. (Now nearly obsolete and a nostalgic choice even in the 1960s, automats offered simple fare, sold from coin-operated vending machines, that was eaten at surrounding booths and counters.) Like many of Arbus’s subjects, these women were photographed in a straightforward manner. The eerily matched ladies face the camera head-on, posed in front of an unadorned marble wall and staring directly at the viewer. The candor with which Arbus presented these women is typical of the pioneering, powerful first-person directness that exists throughout her photography.