I relate to Arbus as I struggle with a lifestyle that I wish was easier to change. Like her I desire to be independent from wealth and materialism. Arbus “revelled in settings that money couldn’t touch, or in surfaces where it had left its scratch marks: Brenda Frazier, pictured in 1966, twenty-eight years after she had been crowned ‘débutante of the year,’ appears to be held together by powder, paint, and pearls.” (Lane)
Arbus’ willingness to crawl away from the social class she was born into contributed to her art. According to the New Yorker Arbus frequented porno cinemas to have sexual relations with strangers, and she also had sexual relations with her sibling Howard from adolescence until the year she died. I can say that she crawled too far from the social responsibilities that she found displacement, but her willingness to break outside of any kind of social boundaries and lifestyles that she did learn inspire me to also change and be who I want to be.
Arbus photographed beyond strange people, but she did not feel as though she was an outcast among these outcasts. “Freaks may abound in her art, but not once do they freak her out.” (Lane) She was simply fascinated by anything that fit outside of the boundaries that she knew of. “If she was a pilgrim on the fringes of society, it was fascination rather than compassion that drove her there, and many of the outcasts she discovered, far from being ground down, had elected to cast themselves out. The balding and shirtless figure who glares at us in “Tattooed man at a carnival, Md.” (1970) requests not an atom of our pity. Indeed, he puts our undistinguished bodies to scorn, brandishing the art work of his torso as though to holler, ‘Get a load of me.’” (Lane)
Diane Arbus inspires me to not give a shit about the judgment I may receive when I wish to be who I want to be. Not only does she inspire me to find my own fascination outside of the boundaries that I know of, but she inspires me to find comfort outside of those boundaries.
Lane, Anthony. “Diane Arbus's America.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 18 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/06/diane-arbus-portrait-of-a-photographer.