Diane Arbus and the Demon Lover

In the larger analogy that binds many creative women, we find a cross-rhythm of pain, loss, and denial. We find a rush into creative expression, with the manic apex appearing in conjunction with object loss.

Like Sylvia Plath, Diane Arbus suffered early object loss, followed by renewed object loss in adulthood.1 It was not her father who died, however. At seven years old, she lost her governess, that very nanny who had yielded her the tenderness foresaken her by her parents. In her teens, she met Allan Arbus, who provided her with the fatherly affection that she had longed for. Older than her in years, and more particularly in manner and experience, Allan Arbus set guidelines for her future life that she hastened to follow. For many years, Diane and Allan worked together as fashion photographers, but the near symbiotic cord was broken, when their individual artistic desires led them two different ways. Like Ted Hughes leaving Sylvia Plath, Allan left Diane for his own art, as well as for another woman. While Diane wandered around with her camera strapped across her chest, anxiously searching out the intensely authentic and deviant, her solo search left Allan to his new career in acting, and to his new kinship with another woman.

So similar to Plath, Diane's reaction to her husband's abandonment was to take the form of frantic creative efforts, of manic intensity. Like Plath also, some of Diane Arbus' best work was done at this time. She sought out transvestites in circus tents and midgets in sideshows. She was seeking the irregular, the erratic, anything that didn't fit into her mother's pretty and false pictures of the world.

Diane Arbus' parents were not the kind to face loss, or to allow mourning. They lived a life invested in their image. The Russeks department store was the family business, and it served as the family facade as well. Diane's mother Gertrude was a department store heiress, whose world was based on being the daughter and the wife of wealthy departme