Frank Diane Arbus with her photograph Retired man and his wife in a nudist camp one morning, N. She also was one of the first photographers to successfully leap from the commercial sphere to the art world, at a time when critics and curators by and large did not consider photography to be an art form. She did so in part based on the strength of a portfolio she began putting together in to try to create some financial independence and to establish her artistic identity. The museum is the only venue for the portfolio, one of just four complete editions that Arbus printed and annotated. The three other editions—the artist never executed her plan to make 50—are held privately.
‘A Young Waitress at a Nudist Camp, N.J. ’, Diane Arbus, , printed after | Tate
Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper Dimensions Image: The couple stand holding hands in a small dirt clearing, centered in the frame amid a patch of oak trees. In the background two cabins can be seen through the trees in the left and right of the frame. The woman looks just to the left of the camera and wears flip-flops and a thin cross necklace. She has dark, cropped hair and a curved figure. The man stands on her right, his body turned at a forty-five degree angle, and directs his smiling gaze up above the lens.