I first read about Diane Arbus in a Washington Post article a few months ago. Back then, my first impression of her was that she was a photographer whose works are being sold at ridiculously high prices on the virtue that she's dead. To my untrained eyes, her shots looked amateurish at best. Harsh, but that was what I thought.

As things would have it, I chanced upon an article in Time recently and got to know about the Diane Arbus Revelations exhibition being held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I went last weekend and had a 180° turnabout; seeing the photos in prints up close, one cannot help but acknowledge the emotions that the portraits evoke. It's reasonably easy to make portraits aesthetically-pleasing; the tough bit is to make them striking and Arbus excelled in doing just that (see accompanying list of photos I particularly like; note that though the images on the web don't do the photos justice). Arbus turned out to be a great writer as well; her letters, notebooks and journals, also being shown at the exhibition, reveal a flair in writing and a great sense of humour.

Do catch the exhitbition before the run at the V&A Museum ends on January 15. If you can't get enough of Arbus, there's the movie starring Nicole Kidman to look forward to.