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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.

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
Demand
Legend
Answer
Tale
Answers
Legends
Quality
Stops
Persons
Freak
Person
Demands
Like
Fairy
Freaks
Tales
Riddle

More quotes by Diane Arbus

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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.
Diane Arbus
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I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
Diane Arbus
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Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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The camera is a kind of license.
Diane Arbus
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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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The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.
Diane Arbus
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Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.
Diane Arbus
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I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.
Diane Arbus
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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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...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.
Diane Arbus
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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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I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.
Diane Arbus
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A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
Diane Arbus