Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus is famous for taking photographs of what the majority of people only described as 'freaks'. This, for example, would be photographs of identical twins, people with skin conditions, or men dressed up as women. Obviously nowadays, these people would not be considered freaks in any way, for society has become a lot more accepting of those who the majority of people deem as 'different'. The example of the man dressing up as a woman that she photographed is the following photo:

Diane Arbus's photographs also seem to show the formal element of form quite a lot of the time, which is used to show the dimensions of an object or person (whether they're two dimensional or three dimensional.) Below is a famous example of when Arbus used this particular formal element of form, which is quite similar to the photograph I have supplied above, of the man dressed up as a woman, but it is from an angle that allows the shadow to be more prominent, thus giving us the idea of what dimension it has been taken in.

Diane Arbus took photographs before coloured photos even existed, so colour is definitely not an  example of what formal element she used. However, the colours can be imagined in this photograph due to the tone she has used to create the imagery: 

Diane Arbus has inspired me, but not in an artistic way, neither has she inspired me through the style of photography she has chosen. Arbus is inspiring to me due to her interest in what/who the photographs are actually of. Instead of taking pictures of what the majority of people might say are 'pretty' or 'attractive', she has done quite the opposite by photographing people that were considered 'freaks' due to their differences. I took from this that each individual can see photographs differently, and all have different interpretations of what a beautiful photograph is. The use of tone, however, is particularly evident in many pieces of my work, and Diane Arbus definitely had a role in this change in photograph type. Here is an example of a piece of work that includes tone from me, which is similar to that of Diane Arbus's work:

To summarize, Diane Arbus's work type (portrait, form) may not be my favourite type of photograph, but who/what she has taken photographs of is really interesting to me, which is why she is one of my favourites in my list of photographers. Again, I would not take away advice from the ways in which she has taken photographs, but I have obtained knowledge as to what could be seen as a beautiful picture, despite the fact many people may disagree with her definition of beautiful.

Finally, Diane Arbus's photograph of a man with some form of skin condition is arguably her most famous. She has used lighting as an effect so our focus is drawn immediately to the man's face. Form is the formal element mostly used here, due to the fact that the light has been shined in a specific direction to cast a shadow, allowing us to see that this is a three dimensional man, not two dimensional.