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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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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
Even
Trying
Make
Good
Things
Cruel
Camera
Photographer
Cameras

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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The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
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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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus
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One thing that struck me early is that you don’t put into a photograph what’s going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in.
Diane Arbus
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I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
Diane Arbus
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You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.
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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Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe.
Diane Arbus
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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.
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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Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
Diane Arbus
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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.
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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One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
Diane Arbus
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Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
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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A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
Diane Arbus
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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.
Diane Arbus