Diane Arbus died in 1971, and this film, shot the following year, gathers the people who actually knew her: friends, colleagues, and figures from the New York photography world she moved through. Rather than a biopic reenactment, it relies on direct interviews, letting those closest to her describe the woman behind photographs of twins, carnival performers, nudists, and other subjects most photographers of her era ignored. The film predates the later dramatized treatments of her life, including the Nicole Kidman feature Fur, and its value is exactly that proximity in time: the memories are fresh, not filtered through decades of myth-making. Viewers get firsthand accounts of her working methods and personality rather than secondhand interpretation. It plays as a period document as much as a biography, a black-and-white record of how Arbus's circle understood her just a year after her death, before the legend hardened into its familiar shape.