was a famous photographer in the 1960's. She grew up privileged in a nice apartment on Park Avenue in New York. She met Allan Arbus at the age of 13 and they married after she turned 18. Allen Arbus was the one that got her into photography because he gave her his first camera after they had started a fashion photography business together. Later though, Allan supported Diane's decision to leave him with the fashion photography business to explore her own interests in photography. She ended up taking pictures of actors, writers, etc. for magazines such as Esquire and Harper's Bazzar. She did in a way though, that would reveal the person in a natural way, innocent, with their guard down. Many of her pictures were very raw, looking into the subject's soul. She was able to accomplish this by following the subject to their home and work and 
talking with them until they would loosen up and shake off the "act" they would put on for the public. Unfortunately, while she was going through a stage of depression, Diane committed suicide in July of 1971. Diane Arbus compelling and worth sharing because she took chances. Back in the 1960's people weren't as accepting of transvestites and nudists as they might be nowadays. She took that chance on her photography that it might be rejected or shunned. Also, many people will not allow strangers to get them to loosen up and show their true selves, let alone take a picture of them at that moment, but Diane was able to do so by not only following them around, but talking and listening to them, kind of like a therapist. Instead of stopping there however, she would take their picture at that exact vulnerable moment.
This is a website with many of her famous photographs. It is a virtual book of her many photographs. There is a variety of photos that are transvestites, nudists, twins, etc.
This website is a
Jewish library website that gives the history of Diane's life. It gives a background of her family and how she grew up privileged and how she became a photographer.This is a website that I thought had a little bit of different information than the Jewish library website about Diane Arbus' life. Such as it gives the name she was born with, Diane Nemerox, and it mentions how her father had asked her and her husband to take photographs for the advertisements for his store. Also, because a lot of her subjectswere born differently, like transvestites, twins, triplets, midgets, and really tall people, the article quotes her saying, "Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. [These people] were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."