Diane Arbus: A Biography

Diane Arbus as a photographer is linked to Walker Evans and Robert Frank. She believed a photograph is a secret about a secret. David Nemerov, her father, was a creative spirit, an enterprising retailer. He expanded the family-owned Russek fur business. He knew fashion was theater, ephemeral. Both Diane and her brother Howard were gifted. A friend felt that Diane and others grew up in an emotional desert of shame, not affirmation, as they received training to become accomplished in the various cultured disciplines. Diane came to believe her circumstances were irrational. She complained that throughout her upbringing of Ethical Culture schools and summer camps she had never felt adversity. Diane met and fell in love with Allan Arbus when she was fourteen. At Fieldston School in Elbert Lenrow's Great Books class, Diane wrote essays on Flaubert and Sophocles, preoccupied with ambiguity, with contradictions. Diane told her friends she was not going to apply to college, she was going to marry Allan Arbus. Her talent set her apart from others; it frightened her. During World War II Howard joined the Canadian Air Force and Allan the Army Signal Corps. When Allan was sent to photography school at Fort Monmouth, Diane moved to Red Bank. Daughter Doon was born in 1945. For a time Diane studied with Berenice Abbott. Allan and Diane worked closely together as a husband and wife fashion photography team. They were creative and perfectionists. In 1951 Allan, Diane, and Doon went to Europe. The sights were a revelation to Diane. All of her experiences were sensory. Another child, Amy, was born in 1954. Allan and Diane were successful, they were 'comers', but they hated the fast-paced trendy world of commercial photography. Howard Nemerov felt the couple was living an unreal but glittering life. NYC was a mecca for photographers. Diane's younger sister Renee was a sculptor. Her husband was a magazine writer. All of the Nemerovs had depressive illnesses, but Diane's were deeper and longer-lasting. It was felt fashion photography, the artifice and the monotony, contributed to Diane's depression, and so she stopped. Allan continued the business. Diane took a course at the New School with Lisette Model. Under Model she began documenting fearsome persons and places. She went to Coney Island. Diane drifted into downtown Bohemia. She developed a friendship with many artists including Mary Frank. Allan and Diane moved their studio to Washington Place. The couple became estranged. Diane and the two girls moved to Charles Street. Silence, cunning, and exile were emblematic of Diane's work according to Emile de Antonio, using a Joycean formulation. During the summer of 1959 Diane photographed circuses. At sideshows she felt shame and awe. Diane acquired a mentor, Marvin Israel, who believed she was an original talent who needed to be pushed. Her snap-shot style and subject matter were perfect for ESQUIRE. On assignment, phot

If you study the following two books you likely will realize that Diane Arbus was a genius: "An Aperture Monograph" and "Diane Arbus: Magazine Work." If you've ever tried to be a good photographer, even as a total amateur, you will appreciate her genius even more.Bravo to Patricia Bosworth for interviewing so many people who are gone now! The following people who knew Diane or who studied her work while she was alive made comments to Bosworth shortly before *they* died: Andy Warhol, Lisette Model, Garry Winogrand, John Putnam (art director of Mad magazine for many years), Bernard Malamud (a friend of Diane's brother Howard Nemerov) and Irving Mansfield (immortalized in an Arbus print as an insecure, greedy man letting his sleazebag wife Jacqueline Susann sit on his bare thighs).Ever heard of Gail Sheehy, author of the 1970s classic "Passages" that all women pursuing careers in social work and medicine used to read? She's still alive, and you can read in Ms. Bosworth's biography about her encounters with Diane before she (Gail) became famous for "Passages."Bosworth presents eyewitness testimony about Diane's clinical depression along with medical records. But Bosworth wisely declines to speculate on why the depression persisted for so long or why Diane refused to take lithium shortly after it hit the market in 1970. (Come to think of it, Bosworth omitted that "lithium" detail from the book but divulged it in an interview she did with Popular Photography magazine for their December 1984 issue.)I'm glad Bosworth annoyed people by presenting evidence but no insight. Here's the only insight she could have provided, and it would have annoyed readers even more. The insightful truth is that Diane was very depressed because her talent made her very lonely. Something inside her drove her constantly to approach new people even though they might have refused her offer for a photograph. Sometimes Diane herself decided after a lot of talking that the person would make a bad photograph. She told one reject (as you can read in the Bosworth book): "I'd never get you without your mask on."But Diane, with her remarkable curiosity and empathy, just had to keep finding new people. How could she possibly have maintained a close relationship with anybody, even nice guy Allan Arbus (father of her children), when so many fascinating people lurked outside her home? Ergo, you get loneliness and depression. That doesn't mean another photographer alive today can use genius as an excuse for clinical depression. You can't possibly have that genius because you're living in an age of the Internet when we all can "surf" the way Diane did on foot 35 years ago. What about the other legendary female photographers who were Diane's competitors during the pre-Internet era? Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cummingham, Margaret Bourke White, etc.? None of them committed suicide or did stupid things, and the careers of them all were much longer than Diane's. Even Lisette Model,

Diane Arbus was the child of immigrant parents, and grew up exploring her potential set against the backdrop of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Her husband, actor Allan Arbus was also an artist looking for his potential. Hers in photography, his in acting. If there is a down side to the book, it is that it is pretty well factual, with very good and close sources, but the book starts to fade when the author explores Diane's later years. Was this woman, born into a family where depression had been discovered in her mother really depressed because of a failed marriage? The author opines to the affirmative. Or was it something more? The book only gives us a glimpse of Allan's troubled reaction to her depression. I believe a more indepth study into the soul of this woman would have shown dramatically the tragedy of her death. Set in the time period, our society was not cognizant or nor able to recognize signals in mental depression. There are many examples in the book of how Diane was attempting to overcome the demons. All in all, I found the book interesting and well written.

The author presents a well balanced accounting of the somewhat tragic life of this important, innovative photographer. Diane Arbus had significant talent, and it is amazing that she continued to produce outstanding work when burdened with a serious chronic depression. The author also impresses us with Arbus's special ability to coax almost anybody to pose for her. If she had lacked this skill, many of her portraits would never have come into being. This is a must read for those interested in the history of photography.

Patrica Bosworth's biography of Diane Arbus is an exellent book.It gives a clear and comprehensive story of Arbus's life,from her comfortable background as a daughter of a Jewish New York merchant family through her early adulthood as the wife and photographic partner of her husband Allan,through the time after her marriage when she was one of the important people on the NY cultural scene,to her disturbing "adventures" and early, tragic death at her own hand. She could not have realized how her influence would be felt so many years after her death,and this book is the only one that does justice to the life and effect of Diane Arbus. Buy it! Read it!