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A woman in a bird mask, N.Y.C., 1967
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
Woman at a Counter Smoking, N.Y.C., 1962
Girl in a coat lying on her bed, N.Y.C.
A Family On Their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, New York
Throughout her career, photographer Diane Arbus demonstrated a gift for capturing the unusual and eccentric in a compelling, thoughtful manner. This now-iconic photograph was originally included in a photo–essay, “Two American Families,” published in the London Sunday Times Magazine. In a letter to her editor, Arbus described encountering the woman pictured here in a bookstore: “I said I wanted to photograph her with husband and children so she suggested I wait till warm weather so I can do it around the pool! … They are a fascinating family. I think all families are creepy in a way.” Part of the caption for the image, based on Arbus’s correspondence, reads, “The parents seem to be dreaming the child and the child seems to be inventing them.
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.