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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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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
Feels
Unfold
Mean
Begins
Never
Photographer
Would
Subject
Subjects
Choose
Means
Feel
More quotes by Diane Arbus
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
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
There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them... It was my teacher Lisette Model who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it will be.
Diane Arbus
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
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
The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.
Diane Arbus
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
If I didn't have a camera, the things I do would be crazy.
Diane Arbus
I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.
Diane Arbus
We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.
Diane Arbus
If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.
Diane Arbus
For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
Diane Arbus
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
You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.
Diane Arbus
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
One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
Diane Arbus
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
I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
Diane Arbus
The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
Diane Arbus
The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.
Diane Arbus
