Diane Arbus (1923-1971)
A Jewish Couple Dancing, NYC, 1963
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Leonid and Tatiana Nevzlin Collection
The influential American photographer Diane Arbus drew her inspiration from1950s and 1960s New York. her street photography focuses on marginalized people and minorities. Like a true anthropologist, she captured the multitude of identities surrounding her.
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Diane Arbus surveys the city’s streets, both familiar and uncanny, photographing the marginalized groups and minorities.capturing people without their knowing, thus giving a sense of immediacy and genuine. She explores the society on the edge, shooting the instant, unveiling the relationship between the people and their city. She employed photojournalistic and documentary techniques to represent people in their everyday life and creating a whole imagery of the New Yorkers nation.
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Arbus was coming from a wealthy Jewish family, to which she was not at ease and assuming completely. hence her upper-middle-class status, her photographs always convey a feeling of closeness and intimacy, exaggerated by the square-format and for instance here, the darkness on the background surrounding the Jewish couple dancing. The bourgeois pair on the picture is smiling widely while dancing, communicating a spirit of confidence. her way to maneuver the lens helps to carry the point of going beyond the sociocultural borders, disclosed by the energy and cartoon mood reflected on the photographs, therefore reducing the economical and sociological barriers between the artist and her subjects. Shooting both marginalized people and the upper-middle classes is a commitment to normalize society, lowering through her camera the different social layers.
her way of portraying different communities was of immense influence after her death, in the second half of the 20th century. One of her major photograph, Identical Twins, inspired the twins in the Stanley Kubrick iconic movie The Shining and her work is still displayed in numerous solo exhibitions across the world.
