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If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.

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
Becomes
Reality
Enough
Really
Way
Scrutinize
Closely
Fantastic
Photographer

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I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.
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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.
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The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
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I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.
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You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.
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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
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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.
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I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
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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.
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Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.
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The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.
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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.
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Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.
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The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
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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.
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Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.
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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.
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Take pictures of what you fear.
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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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Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
Diane Arbus