Quote

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
Struck
Actual
Photograph
Photography
Physical
Darkness
Really
Lately
Love
Thrilling

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The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.
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Take pictures of what you fear.
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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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If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.
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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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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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The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
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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 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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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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One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
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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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One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
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Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
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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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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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The camera is a kind of license.
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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'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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