In the July 2026 issue of The Atlantic, the actor, musician, and writer Steve Martin recalls encountering Diane Arbus while she photographed Disneyland in 1962. At the time, Martin was a teenager working in the park’s magic shop. Leaving one night, he came across Arbus at work near Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and decades later connected the memory with the image Arbus made.
Looking at the work she made during her brief visit, Martin describes his “nostalgia—more like melancholy—for Disneyland,” finding resonance between her images and his feelings about the place. “Arbus photographed the castle as though it were a delectable sweet—more akin to what it was to us Disneyland romantics than to a Manhattan ironist,” he writes.
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