Diane Arbus, Eddie Carmel, Jewish Giant, taken at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, New York, 1970, Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Diane Arbus
American Photographer
Diane Nemerov was born to David Nemerov and Gertrude Russek Nemerov, owners of Russek’s, a Fifth Avenue department store, on March 14, 1923. She married her childhood sweetheart, Allan Arbus, in 1959 and they divorced in 1969.
Arbus is best known for her photographs of outsiders. She captured the stark realities of these people with such unapologetic candor that critics were not always impressed. Yet, her presentation of these people was, in fact, sympathetic. She famously stated, “Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot…. Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.”
Suffering from hepatitis and mental illness, Arbus took her own life on July 26, 1971.
