Diane Arbus - Legacy

Legacy

After Arbus's death, her daughter Doon managed Arbus's estate. She forbade examination of Arbus's correspondence and often denied permission for exhibition or reproduction of Arbus's photographs. The editors of an academic journal published a two-page complaint in 1993 about the estate's control over Arbus's images and its attempt to censor part of an article about Arbus. As of 2000, the estate would not release Arbus's 1957 to 1965 images of transgender people. A 2005 article called the estate's allowing the British press to reproduce only fifteen photographs an attempt to "control criticism and debate." The estate was also criticized in 2008 for minimizing Arbus's early commercial work.

In mid–1972, Arbus was the first American photographer to have photographs displayed at the Venice Biennale; her ten photographs were described as "the overwhelming sensation of the American Pavilion" and "an extraordinary achievement."

The Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective of Arbus's work in late 1972 that subsequently traveled around the United States and Canada through 1975; it was estimated that over seven million people saw the exhibition. A different retrospective traveled around the world between 1973 and 1979.

Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel edited and designed a 1972 book Diane Arbus (or Diane Arbus: an Aperture Monograph) accompanying the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition. It contained eighty of Arbus's photographs, as well as texts from classes that Arbus gave in 1971, some of Arbus's writings, and some of Arbus's interviews. The text in the book includes some of Arbus's most widely cited quotations such as:

• Page 1: "My favorite thing is to go where I've never been."
• Pages 1–2: "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."
• Page 3: "Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot . . . . 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."
• Page 15: "I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them."

In 2001–2004 the 1972 book was selected as one of the most important photobooks in history. Over 300,000 copies of the book had been sold by 2004, unusual as "independent" photobooks are normally produced in editions of less than 5,000.

A half-hour documentary film about Arbus's life and work known as Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus or Going Where I've Never Been: the Photography of Diane Arbus was produced in 1972 and released on video in 1989.

Patricia Bosworth wrote an unauthorized biography of Arbus published in 1984. Although it is said to be "the main source" for understanding Arbus, Bosworth reportedly "received no help from Arbus's daughters, or from their father, or from two of her closest and most prescient friends, Avedon and . . . Marvin Israel." The book was also criticized for insufficiently considering Arbus's personal writings, for speculating about missing information, and for focusing on "sex, depression and famous people," instead of Arbus's art.

Between 2003 and 2006, Arbus and her work were the subject of another major traveling exhibition, Diane Arbus Revelations, that was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Accompanied by a book of the same name, the exhibition included artifacts such as correspondence, books, and cameras as well as 180 photographs by Arbus. Because Arbus's estate approved the exhibition and book, the chronology in the book is "effectively the first authorized biography of the photographer."

In 2006, the fictional film Fur: an Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus was released, starring Nicole Kidman as Arbus; it used Patricia Bosworth's book Diane Arbus: A Biography as a source of inspiration. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased twenty of Arbus's photographs (valued at millions of dollars) and received Arbus's archives as a gift from her estate in 2007.

In 2011, William Todd Schultz published a "psychobiography" of Arbus ("An Emergency in Slow Motion") focused on her inner life and the subjective, personological origins of her photographs. The book features interviews with Arbus's psychotherapist during the two years prior to her death, who felt Arbus was "schizoid" and who also expressed the belief that her suicide was not motivated by a wish to die but a wish to punish. Schultz closely interprets a number of iconic Arbus shots, rooting them in personal motives and experiences.