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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
Closely
Fantastic
Photographer
Becomes
Reality
Enough
Really
Way
Scrutinize

More quotes by Diane Arbus

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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.
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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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Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe.
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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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These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.
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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.
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I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.
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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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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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I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
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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.
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One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
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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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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.
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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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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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A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
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The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.
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For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
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