Disneyland With No People

Photographs by Diane Arbus When I was 17, I worked at Fantasyland’s magic shop as a magician demonstrating Svengali decks, cups and balls, and the Incredible (their word) Shrinking Die. I loved working to exhaustion, and I was proud to become the shop’s youngest night manager. When Disneyland’s summer hours were extended to 9 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends, I was in heaven. I could watch date night unfold, allowing me to observe and absorb teen romantic norms. One night, however, a chance encounter with a renowned artist was to grip me more than 60 years later, setting my nostalgia for Disneyland in dramatic black and white.A summer evening in 1962: The fireworks were over, the crowds dwindled, and the store emptied. I counted out the registers, turned out the lights, and locked the hand-carved sorcerers’ doors behind me.My usual route out was through Sleeping Beauty’s castle, over the moat via a working drawbridge. But tonight, a security guard stopped me. “Can’t go that way, gotta go out the side exit.” “Why?” I asked. He said, “There’s a photographer taking a picture.”[In Focus: Opening day at Disneyland, 1955]I obediently took the adjacent side route (in those days, film was expensive, so no one stepped in front of even the most casual snapshot). I passed the photographer, a woman. I want to say I remember the camera, whether it was on a tripod or whether she held it, and what she was wearing. But I can’t. I want to say I was there when the camera clicked as I strolled by, but I can’t. I want to say I stopped and chatted. I didn’t, but I wish I had. Because the photographer was Diane Arbus.Arbus, among the most renowned photographers of the 20th century, is known for her photographs of the outliers next door—carnies, identical twins, exotic dancers, and weight lifters, among others. (It’s sloppy to call her subjects “freaks,” as some observers did, a term that slanders the subjects as well as the photographer.) She found people to photograph who were v