Albino sword swallower at a carnival, MD.

Diane Arbus's black and white photograph Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival, M D was taken in 1970. The sword swallower stands in the centre of the image, outstretched arms and white blouse marking the centre of the composition, while the handle of the sword mirrors the crucifix suggested by her body. A billowing canvas tent forms the background of the photograph, indicating that this is a performance taking place behind the scenes, not for public consumption.

The carnival
Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival, M D reflects the type of subject matter that attracted Arbus. A carnival performer, marked as an outsider by her lack of pigment and eccentric employment, is exactly the kind of liminal or fringe subject that often populates Arbus's photographs. Her reputation was as a photographer of the freakish and weird. John Szarkowski, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, suggested that in the face of photojournalism's failure to make sense of the mess that was Vietnam, the war's demoralising effect on Americans was best marked by Arbus's photographs, taken half a world away.

Rejecting documentary photography
Szarkowski's comment links Arbus to a movement in photography that turned away from the universal narratives and uplifting humanism of documentary photography. In 1967 Szarkowski organised an exhibition called New Documents at the Museum of Modern Art that documented and cemented this movement. Featuring the work of Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Gary Winogrand, the work rejected the approaches and themes of documentary photography and photojournalism as covered in Life magazine, or The Family of Man, the museum's landmark exhibition held twelve years earlier. Arbus and the others represented a photographic practice that was concerned with personal rather than public issues, and more interested in questions of representation than the documentation and transformation of the world and social relations.