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The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.

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
Photography
Conditions
Maybe
Anything
Brink
Photographing
Conversion
Condition

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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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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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...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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We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.
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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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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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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.
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These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.
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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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I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.
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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 think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.
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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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Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.
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Take pictures of what you fear.
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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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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
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The camera is a kind of license.
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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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You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.
Diane Arbus