Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Early
Comes
Come
Versa
Thing
Struck
Going
Vice
Vices
Photograph

More quotes by Diane Arbus

Image
If I didn't have a camera, the things I do would be crazy.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
Diane Arbus
Image
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
Image
The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.
Diane Arbus
Image
Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
Diane Arbus
Image
These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.
Diane Arbus
Image
One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
...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
Image
I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.
Diane Arbus
Image
Take pictures of what you fear.
Diane Arbus
Image
I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.
Diane Arbus
Image
Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
Diane Arbus