“There are and have been and will be an infinite number of things on Earth. Individuals all different, all wanting different things, all knowing different things, all loving different things, all looking different… . That is what I love: the differentness.”
Identical Twins, Roselle, N. J. has become one of the most iconic images of 20th century photography and an image that is the most closely associated with Diane Arbus’ large body of work. Arguably the greatest female photographer of her generation, Diane Arbus endeavored to uncover the hidden corners of American society and to convey the psyche of those who society marginalized: transgender people, nudists, circus performers, prostitutes, giants, midgets, triplets and twins.
Diane Arbus, ‘A Young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N. Y. C’, 1966
Diane Arbus, 'A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N. Y.', 1970
Diane Arbus, 'Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N. Y. C.', 1967
Diane Arbus, A young man and his pregnant wife in Washington Square Park, NYC, 1965
Arbus photographed several sets of twins and triplets at a Christmas party in the suburban town of Roselle, New Jersey, in 1967. The initial seed for this double portrait had been planted three years earlier, when she met the Slota family and their triplet daughters at an event. They invited Arbus to their home in Jersey City, where she photographed the trio posing in matching outfits as they sat in their shared bedroom. Arbus hoped to capture the same quietly startling combination of recognition and peculiarity when she attended a Christmas party at the Knights of Columbus hall that was hosted by the Suburban Mothers of Twins and Triplets Club of Roselle, New Jersey.
Of this image, Arbus biographer Arthur Lubow noted:
“Nothing in the picture would let you know that Colleen and Cathleen Wade were two of the eight children of a white-collar worker in the employee relations division of the Esso Research and Engineering Company (later rebranded as Exxon). You could, perhaps, correctly conjecture that the dresses the sisters are wearing, with big, flat white collars and white cuffs, were made by their mother. But that is not where the picture takes you. What it indelibly evokes is the duality of a human sensibility. Because the twins are so alike – even the two bobby pins that fix in place their white headbands are arranged in precisely the same way – a viewer focuses on the subtle distinctions between them.”
While the twins themselves–their sameness and differences–hold our fascination, the strength of the photograph is bolstered by composition. The close range and eye-level placement of the camera (two approaches that have become synonymous with Arbus’ work) reduces distraction and keeps the viewer focused on the figures themselves. So powerful is Identical Twins that scores of artists have paid homage to the photograph in cinema, photography, and literature, and Arbus’ unflinching eye continues to inspire generations of photographers.
Center: Mary Ellen Mark, “Caylan and Mylee Simmerman, 10 years old, Mylee older by two minutes, 2001.”
Right: Roger Ballen, Dresie and Casie, Twins, Western Transvaal, South Africa. 1993 to be offered in Elixir of Life: Photographs from The Olbricht collects ion
When Arbus began to print from the negative for Identical Twins in 1967, she was in the midst of experimenting with different printing styles that included solid black borders around her images, straight edges without black borders, and diffuse edges – of which the present lifet.mes print is an example. In autumn 1966 she was selecting and preparing the prints she would include in John Szarkowski’s exhibition New Documents, which opened at The Museum of Modern Art in late February 1967. Even though she had not shot Identical Twins until December 1966, Arbus immediately recognized it as a significant image and decided to include it in the MoMA show. The 27 January 1967 entry in her appointment book notes that Identical Twins was among the thirty 20x16 inch prints being framed for the installation (Diane Arbus, Exh. Cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Revelations, October 25, 2003 - February 08, 2004, p. 183, illustrated). Arbus also printed postcards to announce the exhibition and selected Identical Twins as the featured image.
Arbus chose Identical Twins for inclusion in A Box of Ten Photographs, a portfolio she designed with her friend and colleague Marvin Israel and subsequently self-produced in 1970-71. This careful selection of her life’s work reveals not only Arbus’ favorite photographs, but also the ones she deemed most important for the world to see and absorb (for a selection of photographs from A Box of Ten see Photographs Part II).
Arbus’ legacy was cemented mere months after her tragic suicide in 1971 with the publication of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph by Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel in 1972. Identical Twins, Roselle, N. J. features on the cover of the book, which remains one of the most successful and widely popular photographic monographs of all t.mes . That same year, Diane Arbus opened at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the posthumous retrospective influenced a generation of photographers. Fifty years later, David Zwirner and Fraenkel Gallery restaged this landmark exhibition of 113 photographs in 2022 in New York and 2025 in Los Angeles.
“She was not a theorist but an artist. Her concern was not to buttress philosophical positions but to make pictures. She loved photography for the miracles it performs each day by accident, and respected it for the precise intentional tool that it can be, given talent, dedication, intelligence, and discipline. Her interest in the medium's tradition was broad and generous, but her own favorite predecessors were those whose work nourished her own: August Sander, Brassai, Weegee, and Bill Brandt. She revered these photographers for the precision of their feeling, the economy of their description, the blunt immobility of their imagery, and surely also for their knowledge of darkness. In their photographs she found an unornamented truthfulness that was resonant with her own guesses.”
This print has remained in the same private collects ion for nearly five decades after it was acquired from the photographer’s estate through Robert Miller Gallery, with Larry Gagosian as agent. In the early 1970s, Gagosian sold posters near the UCLA campus before turning his attention to art dealing. Likely because of the accessibility of photographic prints, artworks by Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander (Arbus’ fellow exhibitor in the influential 1967 MoMA exhibition New Documents) were some of the first that Gagosian traded even before opening his first gallery in 1980–decades before his ascension to global mega-gallerist.
Printed by Diane Arbus and signed by Doon Arbus, the photographer’s daughter and executrix, the present large-format lifet.mes print of Identical Twins has remained in the same collects ion for nearly 50 years. Lifet.mes prints by Arbus of any image are scarce and rarely come to market. Other lifet.mes prints of Identical Twins, Roselle, N. J. are held in the collects ions of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D. C.
