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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
Already
Traumatic
Born
Freaks
Trauma
Experience
Freak
Life
Passed
People
Test
Tests
Dreading
Photography
Aristocrats

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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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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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The camera is a kind of license.
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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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These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.
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I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
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I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.
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If I didn't have a camera, the things I do would be crazy.
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...I would never choose a subject for what it means to me. I choose a subject and then what I feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold.
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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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One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
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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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I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.
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The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
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A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
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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.
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I'm very little drawn to photographing people that are known or even subjects that are known. They fascinate me when I've barely heard of them.
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It's important to take bad pictures. It's the bad ones that have to do with what you've never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn't seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again.
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Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe.
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