Amy Arbus

Amy Arbus (born April 16, 1954) is an American, New York City-based, photographer. She teaches portraiture at the International Center of Photography, Anderson Ranch^[1] and the Fine Arts Work Center, and has published several books of photography. She is the daughter of actor Allan Arbus and photographer Diane Arbus and the sister of writer and journalist Doon Arbus.

Life and work

During the 1980s, she had a monthly page in the Village Voice's style section.^[2] Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Architectural Digest, and The New York Times Magazine.

The New Yorker called her book The Fourth Wall her "masterpiece".^[3]

In a talk at UCLA's Hammer Museum, Arbus described her reluctance to become a photographer and her years studying at the Berklee College of Music and hanging out with The Cars (then still unknown), before studying at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.^[4] In an interview published in The Guardian, she explains her initial reluctance to take up photography, saying, "I was holding myself back, afraid to compete with this legend... But I remember the minute the viewfinder came up to my eye, I was like, Oh my God, I'm home."^[5]

Publications

• No Place Like Home (1986).
• The Inconvenience of Being Born (1999).
• On the Street 1980–1990 (2006).
• The Fourth Wall (2008).

Collections

Her work is held in the following public collections:

• New York Public Library.
• Museum of Modern Art, New York.

See also

• List of people whose parent committed suicide

References

External links

• Official website