'bold lusty outrageous radiant silly'

'She was terrific. / The best thing is / her amazing dynamics / she is bold lusty / outrageous radiant / silly. All sorts of / things. Maybe you / should run more / than one.'

Autograph postcard from Diane Arbus to art director John Gerbino after Gerbino commissioned Arbus in spring 1971 to photograph Barbara Hackman Franklin and Germaine Greer for features in New Woman magazine. 'Barbara Hackman Franklin, President Nixon's New Woman' ran, but the Germaine Greer photographs were not published.

Diane Arbus confided to Allan Arbus that Greer 'was fun and is terrific looking but I managed to make [her] otherwise.' According to Arthur Lubow, when the magazine's publisher interviewed Greer 'she recoiled at the feminist's brashness.'

In 1964, Barbara Hackman Franklin was one of the first women to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School, one of only 12 women among 680 men in the first graduating class after faculty voted to allow women to study on the campus. After moving to New York, she held positions at the Singer Company and First National City Bank (now Citibank). The absence of professional networking opportunities for women led Franklin and her friend Charlotte Browne-Mayers of Standard Oil Company to organise their own networking group, hosting monthly meetings for former classmates and other working women. In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed her to lead an effort to recruit and appoint more women for high-level government positions. Altogether, she has served in the administrations of five United States Presidents, and in 2017, Time Magazine named her one of the '50 Women Who Made American Political History'.

Diane Arbus and John Gerbino began working together in 1964 when he was a designer at Harper's Bazaar. Later, as art director of Essence magazine, Gerbino commissioned Arbus to take photographs for two features: 'How Radical is Black Youth?' published in November 1970 and 'Conversation: Ida Lewis and Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr.' published in December 1970.

Autograph letter signed on an unmailed postcard (139 x 88 mm, 5½ x 3½ in), light wear and creasing at corner, pinholes to top edge recto, mark from tape removal to lower edge.

Diane Arbus: A Biography; Diane Arbus: Revelations; Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer.