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I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.

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
Taken
Inspirational
Better
Intended
Always
Photographer
Never
Photograph
Picture
Worse
Photography

More quotes by 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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These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.
Diane Arbus
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I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
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 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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For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
Diane Arbus
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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.
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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A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
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I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
Diane Arbus
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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.
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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If I didn't have a camera, the things I do would be crazy.
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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Take pictures of what you fear.
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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It would be beautiful to photograph the winners of everything from Nobel to booby prize, clutching trophy, or money or certificate, solemn or smiling or tear stained or bloody, on the precarious pinnacle of the human landscape.
Diane Arbus
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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
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