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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

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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
Thing
Photographer
Always
Favorite
Things
Photograph
Photography
Felt
Thought
Firsts
Perverse
First
Naughty

More quotes by Diane Arbus

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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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Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.
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The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
Diane Arbus
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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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I don't know what good composition is.... Sometimes for me composition has to do with a certain brightness or a certain coming to restness and other times it has to do with funny mistakes. There's a kind of rightness and wrongness and sometimes I like rightness and sometimes I like wrongness.
Diane Arbus
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I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
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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 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.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.
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The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.
Diane Arbus
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I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
Diane Arbus
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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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We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.
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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.
Diane Arbus
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If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.
Diane Arbus
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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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I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.
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For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
Diane Arbus
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The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
Diane Arbus