Woman in Her Negligee

About the Art

An elderly woman sits on the edge of a bed revealing her frailty through the thin cloth of a negligée, and characteristic of many Arbus works, she gazes directly at the camera. This powerfully individualistic portrait is representative of the artist's personal fascination with American mores as seen through the eyes of outsiders such as the elderly.

Diane Arbus (b. Nemerov) was born in New York in 1923 and studied photography under Lisette Model. She was one of three photographers (alongside Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand) featured in the influential MoMA exhibition New Documents in 1967. Curated by John Szarkowski, the trio were meant to represent a new generation of photographers and the show would become a landmark in photographic history, attended by nearly 250,000 visitors. Having struggled with mental health, Arbus died by suicide in 1971. After which, her work became increasingly famous; she was the first photographer to be included in the Venice Biennale in 1972. Approximately seven million people saw the traveling retrospective of Arbus’s work, curated by Szarskowski in 1972.

FEATURED IMAGE
Diane Arbus (American, 1923–1971), printed by Neil Selkirk (American, born 1947), Woman in Her Negligee, N.Y.C., 1966, printed 1999, gelatin silver print, image: 14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches, sheet: 20 x 16 inches. Museum purchase with funds provided by the Daniel Blau Endowment Fund by exchange, 2004.43