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Nudist lady with swan sunglasses, Pa.

Diane Arbus American
1965
Not on view
Among Diane Arbus’s most celebrated studies of nudist life, this photograph was one of five on the subject included in the Museum of Modern Art’s New Documents, an influential 1967 group show that featured her work alongside that of Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. Arbus met the picture’s subject in 1965 at Sunny Rest, a nudist camp in Pennsylvania. Carefully coiffed and accessorized, the woman poses with practiced panache. As Arbus noted in an essay on the camps, “Most people are not entirely nude. Some ladies wear beach hats or sunglasses or wedgies and curlers or earrings and pocketbooks. . . . Nudists aren’t purists.”

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Nudist lady with swan sunglasses, Pa.
  • Artist: Diane Arbus (American, New York 1923–1971 New York)
  • Date: 1965
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: Image: 14 1/8 × 13 5/8 in. (35.9 × 34.6 cm)
    Sheet: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gift of Koichiro Yamakawa, in celebration of the Museum's 150th Anniversary, 2019
  • Object Number: 2019.345
  • Rights and Reproduction: © The Estate of Diane Arbus
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

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Woman with bangs, N.Y.C., Diane Arbus American, Gelatin silver print
Woman with bangs, N.Y.C.
Diane Arbus
1961
Couple in their living room hugging, Diane Arbus American, Gelatin silver print
Couple in their living room hugging
Diane Arbus
1971
Blonde female impersonator framed in a mirror beneath a light bulb, N.Y.C., Diane Arbus American, Gelatin silver print
Blonde female impersonator framed in a mirror beneath a light bulb, N.Y.C.
Diane Arbus
1959
[Diane Arbus Typewritten Letter to Stewart Stern]
Diane Arbus
Stewart Stern
ca. August–September 1968
[Diane Arbus Self-Portrait in an Automated Photobooth]
Diane Arbus
ca. 1965

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