Quote

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

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
Stand
Arrange
Mean
Arranging
Work
Awkward
Something
Photographer
Things
Fronts
Like
Photography
Front
Instead
Awkwardness

More quotes by 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
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
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
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
Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.
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
Image
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.
Diane Arbus
Image
The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.
Diane Arbus
Image
One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
Diane Arbus
Image
We stand on a precipice, then before a chasm, and as we wait it becomes higher, wider, deeper, but I am crazy enough to think it doesn't matter which way we leap because when we leap we will have learned to fly. Is that blasphemy or faith?
Diane Arbus
Image
I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
Diane Arbus
Image
The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.
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
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