Quote

Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

Diane Arbus

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Diane Arbus
Age: 48 †
Born: 1923
Born: March 14
Died: 1971
Died: July 26
Fashion Photographer
Photographer
New York City
New York
Diane Nemerov
Diane Nemerov Arbus
Diane née Nemerov
Diane nee Nemerov
Test
Tests
Dreading
Photography
Aristocrats
Already
Traumatic
Born
Freaks
Experience
Trauma
Life
Freak
People
Passed

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One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
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Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe.
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Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.
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One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
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Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.
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The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
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I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.
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For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
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One thing that struck me early is that you don’t put into a photograph what’s going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in.
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There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.
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I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.
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Take pictures of what you fear.
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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
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We stand on a precipice, then before a chasm, and as we wait it becomes higher, wider, deeper, but I am crazy enough to think it doesn't matter which way we leap because when we leap we will have learned to fly. Is that blasphemy or faith?
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There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way.
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The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.
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The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.
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If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.
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I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.
Diane Arbus