Diane Arbus, Triplets in their bedroom, NJ, 1963. © The Estate of Diane Arbus

“Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience,” photographer Diane Arbus once said. “Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.” The way we talk about people has come a long way; sadly, the way we treat people has not. Arbus had a knack for capturing the interior lives of people at the fringes: the ‘freak’ in a circus act, the ‘female impersonator’ in a nightclub, an appendage to a boyfriend, an elderly woman in fur wearing white gloves and pearls with bows on her shoes. We can see through Arbus’ lens how these people were treated and the circumstances of their lives; her photographs were and are invitations to engage with others.

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Arbus brings us the marginal, the unseen, the forgotten. She reminds us, in her words, that, “The mistake is to think people are sealed and absolute. They are just instruments of life, and it flows through them to the point where their edges are invisible.” It’s the mark of a true artist—one who pushed beyond society’s comfort zone and tapped into the unknown. She is unique and indelible, courageous, devoted to her work, forceful and hard to ignore.

Arbus was born in 1923 in Manhattan and died there at 48 by suicide. In between, she had two daughters with photographer Allan Arbus: Doon and Amy. She photographed, often with accompanying stories in her own words, for Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Sunday Times Magazine and Artforum. Among her subjects were Mae West, film stars Lillian and

© Observer