Diane Arbus
I will always remember the first time I saw her work, the image below, in a gallery in downtown San Francisco. I had seen so much that day, image and art and interpretation all swirling around in my mind, looking for a place to land. And then this portrait mesmorized me and there was nothing else to dare compete for my attention. It changed the way I felt about photography, forever.
Her startling photographic images of dwarfs, twins, giants and transvestites seem to redefine the normal and the abnormal in our lives. A selected group of these photographs attracted a great deal of critical and popular attention when they were featured at the Museum of Modern Art's 1967 exhibition "New Documents." The boldness of her subject matter and photographic approach were recognized as revolutionary. Since her death in 1971, critics have continued to debate the meaning of her photographs and the intentions behind them.