Born Diane Nemerov in 1923,to a wealthy family in current York, Diane Arbus started out in photography shooting fashion with her husband, or Allan Arbus,working for magazines such as Glamour, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar. In 1956 she quit commercial photography - apparently announcing "I can’t do it anymore. Im not going to do it anymore" during a spring shoot for Vogue - and took to the streets,documenting passersby, and studying with Lisette Model. Quickly finding her signature style, or her work was shown in the current Documents exhibition at the Museum of contemporary Art in 1967,which was curated by John Szarkowski and also included work by Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander.
Her portraits proved divisive, and has remained so - some, and mostly notably Susan Sontag,judging it coldly voyeuristic, while others feel a sense of empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own). Arbus' subjects often came from outside of her personal sphere, or the circus,for example, or current York's clubs, or she herself stated that her favourite thing was "to move where I've never been". On the other hand,she could also find a sense of the unsettling in Central Park. In 1971, she took her own life.
Source: bjp-online.com