Diane Arbus is renowned for intimate, disquieting portraits that confront the complexities of identity and difference. Working largely with a square-format camera and direct flash, she cultivated a collaborative encounter in which subjects meet the lens with purposeful, unflinching presence.
Her inclusion in MoMA’s 1967 New Documents exhibition signalled a shift in documentary practice toward the personal and the psychological. Arbus’s influence endures through her distinctive approach to empathy and ambiguity—images that refuse easy narratives while expanding the possibilities of photographic portraiture.