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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

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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
Thinking
Stand
Leap
Waiting
Deeper
Faith
Wait
Doesn
Photography
Chasm
Matter
Higher
Chasms
Enough
Becomes
Precipice
Way
Learned
Blasphemy
Think
Crazy
Wider

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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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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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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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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.
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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.
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You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.
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I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
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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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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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If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.
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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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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.
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The camera is a kind of license.
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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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I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.
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One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
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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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The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
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