Diane Arbus: A Biography

Patricia Bosworth

W. W. Norton & Company, 2005 - Biography & Autobiography - 368 pages

Diane Arbus was the archetypal artist living on the edge.

Diane Arbus's unsettling photographs of dwarves and twins, transvestites and giants, both polarized and inspired, and her work had already become legendary when she committed suicide in 1971. This groundbreaking biography examines the private life behind Arbus's controversial art. The book deals with Arbus's pampered Manhattan childhood, her passionate marriage to Allan Arbus, their work together as fashion photographers, the emotional upheaval surrounding the end of their marriage, and the radical, liberating, and ultimately tragic turn Arbus's art took during the 1960s when she was so richly productive. This edition includes a new afterword by Patricia Bosworth that covers the phenomenon of Arbus since her death, the latest Arbus scholarship, and a view of the first major retrospective of Arbus's work as well as notes on the forthcoming motion picture based on her story. Bosworth's engrossing book is a portrait of a woman who drastically altered our sense of what is permissible in photography.

Contents

• III: xi
• IV: xiv
• V: 11
• VI: 18
• VII: 25
• VIII: 34
• IX: 45
• X: 51
• XI: 61
• XIII: 63
• XIV: 73
• XV: 77
• XVI: 82
• XVII: 91
• XVIII: 95
• XIX: 107
• XX: 114
• XXI: 121
• XXII: 131
• XXIII: 137
• XXIV: 145
• XXV: 151
• XXVII: 153
• XXVIII: 168
• XXIX: 172
• XXX: 183
• XXXI: 204
• XXXII: 212
• XXXIII: 220
• XXXIV: 240
• XXXV: 248
• XXXVI: 263
• XXXVII: 277
• XXXVIII: 305
• XXXIX: 319
• XL: 325
• XLI: 351

Popular passages

Page vii - A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.‎

About the author

Patricia Bosworth (1933—2020) was the author of acclaimed biographies about Diane Arbus, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando, as well as a memoir, Anything Your Little Heart Desires. She was a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and taught writing at Columbia University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Diane Arbus: A Biography
• Author: Patricia Bosworth
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, reissue, revised
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005
• ISBN: 0393326616, 9780393326611
• Length: 368 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Artists, Architects, Photographers; Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography & Autobiography / Women; History / General; Photography / Individual Photographers / General