I usually think of artists who draw and paint as having the most beautiful notebooks and sketchbooks, but photographers keep some intriguing notebooks too: my latest “other people’s notebooks” fascination is with Diane Arbus. I’ve always found her quite interesting, since discovering her photographs when I was in high school, to more recently reading Patricia Bosworth’s biography of her. I also have a newer biography by Arthur Lublow on my to-read pile.

I guess it was after reading the Bosworth book that I decided to see if there were any images of Diane Arbus notebooks online. I was excited when I found this one!

Unfortunately, I snapped that screenshot over a year ago, and when I went back to look at the link now, the content was no longer available. However, I did find a couple other glimpses of Diane Arbus notebooks online:

The Yale University Press website shows photo of one of her appointment books, as featured in the book Diane Arbus: In the Beginning

The Malba Foundation website also has an image accompanying an article about an exhibit:

The book Diane Arbus Revelations contains excerpts from her notebooks and letters, and apparently some images too. (You can see one of the spreads below, from a listing at the Fraenkel Gallery online shop.)

Some other images of Diane Arbus notebooks seem to have made their way onto Pinterest, but otherwise I haven’t seen much. I’ll be keeping my eyes out for more– she’s a fascinating figure who had an interesting life story as well as being a brilliant photographer.