Magazine Work

Diane Arbus: Magazine Work collects the photographs Arbus made on assignment for Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, and other magazines between 1960 and 1971, work she never separated from her personal projects.

Edited by Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel with an essay by Thomas W. Southall, the book was first published by Aperture in 1984 and reprinted several times since; this is the 2005 impression. It reproduces the tear sheets and layouts alongside the original photographs, showing how portraits of figures such as Mae West, Jorge Luis Borges, and Norman Mailer moved from Arbus's camera into print. The magazine format gave her steady access to strangers and public figures alike, and she used it the same way she used the street.

Arbus died in 1971, and this volume, assembled well after her death by her daughter and her friend and editor, argues against any hard line between commercial photography and art. It sits with Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph and Revelations as one of the primary sources for how her published work actually looked on the page.