Quote

The camera is a kind of license.

Diane Arbus

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Kind
License
Camera
Photographer
Cameras

More quotes by Diane Arbus

Image
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
Image
For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.
Diane Arbus
Image
One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
Diane Arbus
Image
Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.
Diane Arbus
Image
I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't.
Diane Arbus
Image
These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn't it be lovely? Yes.
Diane Arbus
Image
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.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
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.
Diane Arbus
Image
I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.
Diane Arbus
Image
The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.
Diane Arbus
Image
If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.
Diane Arbus
Image
If I didn't have a camera, the things I do would be crazy.
Diane Arbus
Image
We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.
Diane Arbus
Image
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
Image
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus