Diane Arbus is a well known American photographer who focuses on black and white portraits of the outcasts of society. Arbus’s portraits often focus on the mentally ill, transgender people, and circus performers. Arbus’s famous portraits are still very important to photography today because, Arbus branched out into society to find people you don’t see everyday and brought them to the attention of the viewers. Personally I think the portraits worked so well because the subjects she was photographing have such a strong presence in front of the camera. Diane Arbus links to my own photography project (manipulating identity and exploring the definitions of beauty) because as a photographer Arbus takes what some people might view as ugly or unwanted and turns those groups of people into pieces of artwork.
Arbus’s work is very much about documenting whats in front of her. Arbus started out by simply roaming the streets of New York looking for certain people who caught her eye and asking them for portraits. I can take inspiration from Diane Arbus by photographing the ‘un-natural’ things I encounter in my day to day life. She links in well with my current project because my work is all about capturing the un-natural and questioning it’s beauty. I am a fan of a lot of Arbus’s work and she is a photographer who I respect and look up to a lot, one of my favourite pictures from Arbus is the portrait of the transgender man smoking a cigarette. I love this photograph because I like how the subject looks and reacts to the camera, he is looking down on the camera with a disapproving look which might reflect his opinion on how society usually treats him, he is looking down on society as they look down on him.