"Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw. It's just extraordinary that we should have been given these peculiarities. And, not content with what we were given, we create a whole other set. Our whole guise is like giving a sign to the world to think of us in a certain way but there's a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can't help people knowing about you. And that has to do with what I've always called the gap between intention and effect."2

This Diane Arbus statement explains a crucial element of her unique artistic sensibility. Arbus vividly depicted her perception of her subjects' "flaw" and their "gap between intention and effect" many times in her mature work. This approach was part of her ongoing examination of the deceptiveness of exterior appearances. This fascinatingly unorthodox and highly personal way of perceiving and portraying humanity was exceptional and one of Arbus' essential contributions to photographic art.

Arbus also used a variety of other techniques and strategies that became hallmarks of her mature style: square formatted black and white photographs with sharp focus on the subject, black or feathered picture borders (which showed that the pictures weren't cropped), bedroom portraits, glowing windows and the extensive use of flash photography—especially during the daytime. Additionally, Arbus' work contains clear allusions to the Bible, visual fine art, literature, photographic history and states of mind.

It is important to note that from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s Diane, along with her then husband Allan, were a successful fashion photography team in New York City.3 Their work appeared in Glamour, Vogue, Seventeen and many other magazines. During these years she learned the techniques of composing shots, posing subjects, choosing locations, dealing with extreme personalities and creating visually concise photographs meant to catch the eye at a glance. These essential skills served her well for the rest of her life.

However, in reviewing her work of the 1960s and 1970s, it is clear that Arbus reacted strongly and consistently against the artifice and vapidness of fashion photography. She chose to completely invert the characteristics of glamour imagery: smile becomes scowl or grimace, color becomes black & white, flattering lighting becomes harsh and glaring, pretty models are replaced by people at society's edges. Though she continued to shoot fashion occasionally in the 60s and 70s (and then only for the money), as a professional insider, Arbus was probably the first famous photographer to create such a knowing critique and acidic satire of fashion photography. Or, as the late essayist Susan Sontag tersely put it, "It was her way of saying fuck Vogue, fuck fashion, fuck what's pretty."4

The comparison of the Sander Peasant Girls and Arbus Twins photographs also points out Arbus' inspired choice to shoot and print in black and white—it adds a timeless quality to her work. When Arbus revisited classic subject matter of documentary photography, while adding her own perspective, her black and white prints still referenced the pioneering photographers that came before her.

Some of Arbus' work recalled the documentary tradition of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers of the 1930s. Their photographs, taken for the U.S. federal government, depicted the extreme poverty of rural America during the Great Depression.5 Arbus documented rural poverty too but with a psychological twist that is much more disturbing than the work of the FSA photographers.

Renowned FSA photographer Walker Evans (1903–1975) and Diane Arbus both photographed victims of Southern impoverishment. Arbus, who knew Evans' work well, became acquainted with him in the 1960s. Evans was so impressed with her work that he recommended her for a Guggenheim Fellowship. Evans wrote of Arbus:

"This artist is daring, extremely gifted, and a born huntress. There may be something naïve about her work if there is anything naïve about the devil."6

Arbus did not photograph her subjects in conventional studio settings. Rather she went and photographed them on their own turf, ideally in their bedrooms—the ultimate inner sanctum. This is true for both her private and commercial work. This approach undoubtedly contributes to her subject's ease in front of the camera. It also provides revealing details that help define the world of her subjects.

This approach is clear in Transvestite at her birthday party, N.Y.C. 1969, which was one of Arbus' long term personal projects. The street name of the subject has been given as "Vicki," a prostitute.8

Shot in West's Hollywood bedroom, her expensive tastes come through: silk sheets, upholstered bed, an elaborate candleholder and a pet monkey. West's world oozes luxury and more than a little hint of decadence.

What these two portraits share is the candidness and relaxation that the subjects' display in their own private environments. These results would have been considerably harder, if not impossible, for Arbus to achieve in a studio setting or anywhere else.

The photograph also illustrates Arbus' use of strong, almost overpowering, backlighting. In this photo and in many others (but more noticeable in her commercial work) the incoming light from the background windows blurs the physical boundaries of their frames and produces an ethereal effect that adds a dreamy prominence to the subjects because of the high contrast lighting conditions.

Beginning in the early 60s, when natural lighting wasn't available or sufficient, Arbus would often use flash. Besides illuminating an area, Arbus' use of flash in many instances produced a distorted effect that heightened the surreal feeling of her work. Her photograph Tattooed man at a carnival, Md. 1970 is a prime example.

On a late hazy afternoon against a blurred backdrop of carnival flags and a tent, Arbus photographs a tattooed man. The flash lights up his body giving it a glowing sheen. His blazing eyes are wide open and his irises are fully contracted making them appear to be lit up in a demonic gaze; it is spooky, theatrical and unsettling. This character could be stepping straight out of a B movie Arbus might catch at a drive-in.9

At other times Arbus' use of flash produces the voyeuristic feeling of peering into forbidden places. In A woman with her baby monkey, N.J. 1971, the camera's flash casts heavy shadows off the lady with her monkey, creating the feeling that Arbus is pointing a probing light into a dark, lonely corner to reveal the edges of reality.

"Freaks was (sic) a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."12

Physically, these people are deformed—even grotesque. But the games they are playing, the smiles on their faces, and the costumes they are wearing on Halloween establish mutual reference points of pleasure for the viewer and the subjects in the photographs. It must have been a real eye-opening experience for Diane Arbus as she took these photographs; perhaps her most profoundly lasting gifts were the abilities to convey these deeply penetrating psychological and emotional insights via the photographic medium.13

By comparison, the pictures in Magazine Work are more varied. Her work appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, the Sunday Times Magazine (London) and many other publications. Some of this work looks attractive but is practically anonymous because images do not convey any of Arbus' psychological touches and include little of her distinctive photographic techniques.

"These...people…appear like metaphors somewhere further out than we do, beckoned, not driven, invented by belief, author and hero of a real dream by which our own courage and cunning are tested and tried; so that we may wonder all over again what is veritable and inevitable and possible and what it is to become whoever we may be."14

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