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

More quotes by 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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Take pictures of what you fear.
Diane Arbus
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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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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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Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.
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
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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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Lately I've been struck with how I really love what you can't see in a photograph. An actual physical darkness. And it's very thrilling for me to see darkness again.
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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Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.
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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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.
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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The camera is a kind of license.
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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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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The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
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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Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
Diane Arbus
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One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
Diane Arbus