DIANE ARBUS

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) was an American photographer and one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Working in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, she made direct, square-format portraits of people on the margins of mainstream society, including performers, nudists, drag queens and twins, alongside ordinary families and suburbanites.

Her work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in the landmark 1967 exhibition New Documents, and a posthumous MoMA retrospective in 1972 drew record crowds. Her photographs are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Tate and the Centre Pompidou, among many others. Prints made after her death are produced under the authority of her estate.