Through physical and mental places
14 March 1923 26 July 1971 Diane Nemerov was born in New York on March 14, 1923 to a wealthy Jewish family of Polish origin, owner of the famous chain of fur shops, called Russek's ", named after the founder, Diane's maternal grandfather. The second of three children--the largest of which, Howard, will become one of the most popular contemporary American poets, a minor Renée a note sculptor-Diane lives, between agi and attentive nannies, a childhood be overprotected, that maybe it will be for her the imprinting of a sense of insecurity and recurrent "estrangement from reality" in his life. He attended the Ethical Culture School, then up to the twelfth class the Fieldstone School, schools whose educational method, based on a humanistic religious philosophy, gave an important role to the "spiritual food" of creativity. His artistic talent he then way to manifest itself early, encouraged by his father who sends her twelve-year-old yet to drawing lesson from an illustrator of "Russek's" Dorothy Thompson, who had been a student of George Grosz. The grotesque human defect complaint (s), to watercolors where her teacher begins, will find fertile ground in the fertile imagination of the girl, and his pictorial subjects are remembered as unusual and provocative. At the age of fourteen he met Allan Arbus, who married just turned eighteen, despite opposition from family, social level which is deemed inappropriate. They will have two daughters, Doon and Amy. He learned the craft as a photographer, working together for a long time in fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Glamour. With his last name, which will keep even after separation, Diane becomes a controversial myth of photography. The common life of the spouses Arbus is marked by important meetings, they being part of New York's vibrant artistic climate, especially in the years ' 50 when the Greenwich Village beatnik culture becomes a point of reference. At that time, Diane Arbus meets, as well as famous people like Robert Frank, Louis Faurer (to cite, among others, only those who would be most directly inspired), a young photographer, Stanley Kubrick, who later as a Director in "the Shining" will render to Diane tribute a famous "quote", menacing appearance of two twins in the hallucinatory. In 1957 consumes her divorce her husband's artistic (the wedding itself is now in crisis), leaving the studio Arbus, in which his role was creative subordination, to devote himself to a more personal search. Already ten years before had tried to break away from fashion, attracted as images more real and immediate, studying briefly with Berenice Abbott. He enrolled to a seminar of Alexey Brodovitch, who formerly art director of Harper's Bazaar, advocated the importance of showmanship in the photograph; hearing him though foreign to their sensibility soon begins to attend classes at the New School of Lisette Model, towards whose night images and lifelike portraits feels strongly attracted. She will have a determining influence on Arbus, not making its own emulates, but encouraging her to look for its subject and style. Diane Arbus is dedicated to his research tirelessly, then moving through places (physical and mental), which has always had for her were the subject of prohibitions, borrowed from strict upbringing. Explore the poor suburbs, the shows of fourth order often linked to moral poverty and misery, but discovers transvestism, is predominantly Centre of its interest in "horror" attraction he feels toward the freaks. Fascinated by this dark world did "wonders of nature", at that time assiduously frequents the Museum of monsters Hubert, and his shows freak show, whose strange protagonists meet and photograph in private. It's just the beginning of a survey exploring the varied, as denied, world parallel to that of the recognized "normality", that will take her, supported by friends such as Marvin Israel, Richard Avedon, and Walker Evans (recognizing the value of his work, for the more doubt) to move between dwarves, Giants, transvestites, homosexuals, nudist, mentally retarded and twins, but also ordinary people caught in incongruous attitudes with that look at once aloof and involved, which makes its unique images. In 1963 received a scholarship from the Guggenheim Foundation, will receive a second in 1966. Will he publish his images in magazines such as Esquire, Bazaar, New York Times, Newsweek, and the London Sunday Times, often by picking up bitter controversy; the same accompanying in 1965 the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York "recent acquisitions", where he exhibited some of his works, deemed too strong and even offensive, alongside those of Winogrand and Friedlander. A better welcome will have, especially in the world of culture his own "new documents" in March of 1967 at the same Museum; There will be criticism of right-thinking people, but Diane Arbus is already a recognized and accomplished photographer. Starting from 1965 taught in various schools. The last years of his life were marked by a fervent activities, aimed perhaps even fighting with live emotions frequent depression, of which he is the victim, who had contracted hepatitis during those years and the massive use of antidepressants had undermined her physical. Diane Arbus commits suicide on July 26, 1971, ingesting a heavy dose of barbiturates and's gustative the wrists. The following year his death MOMA dedicated a major retrospective, and is also the first among American photographers to be hosted by the Venice Biennale, posthumous awards which will boost his fame, still unfortunately unhappily tied to the title of "photographer of freaks". In October 2006 goes to the cinema movie "Fur" based on the novel by Patricia Bosworth, chronicling the life of Diane Arbus, starring Nicole Kidman.