Nudist lady with swan sunglasses, Pa.

Diane Arbus American

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.”

Nudist lady with swan sunglasses, Pa., Diane Arbus (American, New York 1923–1971 New York), Gelatin silver print

This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.