Diane Arbus: A Biography by Patricia Bosworth; Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow

These are my raggedy jeans that I wear around the house.  They keep getting more and more ripped as time goes by.  Why am I wearing them?  Because if I have some spare money I will use it to buy a book.

It's a beautiful time of the year! Enjoy it by listening to Corelli's Christmas Concerto!

One of my passions is photography.  Arbus was always a favorite but I had no idea how tragic her life was until I read these biographies.  She was a fascinating but also a sad and even repulsive individual but I still find her photos fascinating.

Diane Arbus: A Biography by Patricia Bosworth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a briefer biography than Arthur Lubow's by about two hundred pages. While Bosworth did not shy away from Arbus' deviant sexual proclivities, she avoided that salacious detail Lubow enjoyed indulging in, which may account for the shorter version.

Also, this biography was written in 1984 and without the cooperation of Arbus' husband, lover Marvin Israel or her daughters, Amy and Doon, which could also explain a greater lack of detail than Lubow's book. Her brother, Howard, mother Gertrude, and some of Diane's close friends, and about two hundred others did contribute. Having read Lubow's book, I see where he used Bosworth's biography as a resource.

It is also interesting to see how much time has changed things. Many of the important or remarkable people Bosworth includes in her biography as reference points are unknown now. One, Richard Avedon, is still known, if for no other reason that a biography has just come out on his own life. The others you'll be lucky to find a Wikipedia bio.

Arbus was a sad, tragic figure. She grew up in a rich, privileged home on Park Avenue with nannies and servants. Her parents were self-made businessmen whose families escaped the Jewish pogroms of Europe and created wealth through the fur coat business.

The only thing her parents did not provide her or her brother and sister with was love, affection and attention. Gertrude Nemerov, Diane's mother, was self-absorbed and suffered from acute depression. David, her father, played mind games with his children. When he was angry with them he completely withdrew until he chose to "forgive" them.

Diane, according to her own accounts was already showing signs of emotional disturbance at a young age. In fact she sounds like she may have suffered from Radical Attachment Disorder, something children from neglected households can develop.

Whatever the reasons, Diane's heart gravitated toward the deviant and marginalized in society, "freaks" as she called them.

Her photographs focus on circus entertainers, midgets, giants, deformed people as well as the grungier streets of New York City. A large part of her repertoire include transvestites, lesbians, and drug addicts.

Arbus said that everyone has a secret and she wanted to pull that secret out of them with her camera.

She was largely unrecognized during her life time. Many found her photos to be repulsive. Since her death in 1971 she has been considered one of the defining photographers of the sixties.



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Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Arthur Lubow's biography is the most thorough one of Diane Arbus to date. While crediting Patricia Bosworth's 1984 biography for its valuable original information, his is almost three hundred pages longer.

One of the reasons is because archives and information have been released since Bosworth wrote her biography. Lubow took over a decade to write his biography and he had access to many people who were personal friends with Arbus. These friends have also since passed away which may be why Lubow's book is much more detailed and graphic about the less savory aspects of her life than Bosworth's biography.

Arbus was born into wealth. Her parents and grandparents were self-made wealthy businessmen. Immigrating to America to escape the Jewish pogroms of Europe, possessing nothing but the clothes on their back, they pushed against the Anti-Semiticism that was prevalent at the time and soon were living the lavish lifestyles of their WASP predecessors. I have to admire a people who never made excuses for themselves but simply worked hard and succeeded.

However, Arbus rejected her privileged upbringing, but she was still very much a product of her environment. Her childhood was without any affection or attention from her parents. According to Lubow she and her brother Howard tried to compensate by being absorbantly affectionate with each other, beyond what would be considered healthy. I do not know how accurate some of Lubow's information is, because Bosworth makes no mention of this and the people involved are all dead, but Arbus apparently casually remarked to her therapist that she and her brother carried on an incestuous relationship since she was very young.

Diane was casual about her sex life. She did not believe in prohibitions of any kind. This belief is partly what drove her to photograph deviants of society. She felt like a freak and identified with them. She detested normal people and loathed privilege ones. Her photographs reflect this.

She claimed to be pulling truth out of her subjects but all a photographer can really do is reflect themselves. If they love people, it shows; if they hate people it shows as well.

Arbus hated regular people. Her "regular" people are shown to be ugly, jaded and nightmarish in her photos. People belonging to an underworld, of circus freaks, prostitutes, transvestites, lesbians and drug addicts, are shown with compassion. Interestingly she refused to photograph hippies, insisting that they were fabricated. They weren't truly freaks or outsiders.

She also took photos of people engaged in group sex, in which she participated, and nudists, which she also participated in.

Several people remarked that she dressed and talked like a little girl. This is classic symptoms of sexual abuse as a child and may explain her attraction to the rejects of society.

Diane did not see any reason for sexual fidelity to one's spouse and was open about sleeping with another man to her husband. Lubow claims that her husband, Allan, had no problem with this, but shortly after, he began seeking girlfriends and finally left Diane who was devastated.

Diane also had a lover who was married. She did not care he was married but did not understand why he did not spend more time with her. It's as if she had created her own moral code and could not understand why the rest of the world did not live by its rules.

When someone is intimate with everyone, they can get close to no one and Diane, for someone who only wanted truth, discovered this painful truth as she became more and more isolated and alienated from the people around her. She suffered from severe bouts of depression that was only alleviated when she threw herself into photographing.

Everything she did was an attempt to "feel". She felt numb and wanted to know she was really alive. The sex and photography did this for her, but it did not last and she finally reached the end of her endurance.

One day, she took an overdose of barbituates, got into her bath tub fully dressed and slashed her wrists. She was found by her lover Marvin Israel who never visited her, but came when she did not return his calls. He told no one and her funeral was sparsely attended. This angered many of her friends because they did not know about her death until it was too late.

Biographies are useful in that after reading them one feels as though one has almost acquired a new member to their family. For all of Diane's complexities, I feel an attachment to her and an appreciation for her photography that I did not previously possess.



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Neither of my reviews do these books justice.  There was so much more to Diane Arbus.  Both books quote her feelings and beliefs about how to take photos and why she took them.  A lot of her explanations are rather rambling and incoherent but are still worth reading.  Both of these books allow one a bit of an inside to this mysterious woman who died so tragically.

The books do not have any photos of her work (they were not given releases) but one can buy collections of them from Amazon, eBay or simply look them up on the internet.