Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus (/diːˈæn ˈɑːrbəs/; March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer.

Quotes

• "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know."

• "My favorite thing is to go where I've never been."

• "Our whole guise is like giving a sign to the world to think of us in a certain way, but there's a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can't help people knowing about you. And that has to do with what I've always called the gap between intention and effect."

• "Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot....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. 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."

• "I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them."

• "It's always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction. The best example I know is when you go to the movies and you see two people in bed, you're willing to put aside the fact that you perfectly well know that there was a director and a cameraman and assorted lighting people all in that same room and the two people in bed weren't really alone. But when you look at a photograph, you can never put that aside."

• "Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw."

• "They are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they'll still be there looking at you."

• "I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse."

• "For me the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And more complicated. I do have a feeling for the print but I don't have a holy feeling for it. I really think what it is, is what it's about. I mean it has to be of something. And what it's of is always more remarkable than what it is."

• "Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize."

• "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."

Quotes about

• She was really terrific...Diane was one of the first female role models I ever had that didn’t wash the floor six times a day. I liked her as a teacher.
  • Barbara Kruger Interview (2013)