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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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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
Darkness
Really
Lately
Love
Thrilling
Struck
Actual
Photograph
Photography
Physical

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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.
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Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
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The camera is a kind of license.
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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?
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One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
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I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.
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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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Take pictures of what you fear.
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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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If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.
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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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You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.
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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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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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Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.
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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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Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.
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These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.
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I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
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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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