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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

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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
Understanding
Peace
Grasped
Success
Uplifting
Inspirational
Contemplation
Action
Edge
Hands
Edges
Mind
Cutting
World
Hand

More quotes by Diane Arbus

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For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.
Diane Arbus
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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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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.
Diane Arbus
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One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
Diane Arbus
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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
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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A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
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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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The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
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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I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.
Diane Arbus
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The camera is a kind of license.
Diane Arbus
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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 mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.
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.
Diane Arbus
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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