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Diane Arbus Quotes

Diane Arbus was an American photographer noted for photographs of marginalized people—dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers—and others whose normality was perceived by the general populace as ugly or surreal. Her work has been described as consisting of formal manipulation characterized by blatant sensationalism.

In 1972, a year after she committed suicide , Arbus became the first American photographer to have photographs displayed at the Venice Biennale. Millions viewed traveling exhibitions of her work in 1972–1979. The book accompanying the exhibition, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph, edited by Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel and first published in 1972 was still in print by 2006, having become the best selling photography monograph ever. Between 2003 and 2006, Arbus and her work were the subjects of another major traveling exhibition, Diane Arbus Revelations. In 2006, the motion picture Fur, starring Nicole Kidman as Arbus, presented a fictional version of her life story.

✵ 14. March 1923 – 26. July 1971
Diane Arbus: 16 quotes23 likes

Famous Diane Arbus Quotes

“Every Difference is a Likeness too.”

Diane Arbus

“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

“Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding”

Diane Arbus

Variant: Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.

Diane Arbus Quotes

“I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”

Diane Arbus

“I mean, it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.”

Diane Arbus

“The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way.”

Diane Arbus

Source: Diane Arbus: Revelations

“My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.”

Diane Arbus

Source: Arbus, Diane, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph, 1972, Aperture, New York, 978-0912334400, https://archive.org/details/dianearbus00arbu] source: Arbus, Diane. Diane Arbus. Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1972. ISBN 0-912334-40-1. source: DeCarlo, Tessa (May 2004).

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-fresh-look-at-diane-arbus-99861134/ "A Fresh Look at Diane Arbus". Smithsonian magazine. Retrieved December 13, 2017.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910470,00.html "Art: to Hades with Lens". Time, November 13, 1972. Retrieved February 12, 2010.

“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.”

Diane Arbus

Schjeldahl, Peter. &quot;Looking Back: Diane Arbus at the Met&quot; http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/03/21/050321craw_artworld?currentPage=all, The New Yorker, March 21, 2005. Retrieved February 4, 2010. source: Sass, Louis A. &quot;&#x27;Hyped on Clarity&#x27;: Diane Arbus and the Postmodern Condition&quot;. Raritan, volume 25, number 1, pp. 1–37, Summer 2005. <br><br> <br class="br">Source: Kimmelman, Michael, The Profound Vision of Diane Arbus: Flaws in Beauty, Beauty in Flaws, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/arts/design/the-profound-vision-of-diane-arbus-flaws-in-beauty-beauty-in.html, 1 November 2018, The New York Times, 11 March 2005

“What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's…. That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own.”

Diane Arbus

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

Diane Arbus

Source: Arbus, Diane, Five Photographs by Diane Arbus, Artforum, May 1971, 9, 9, https://www.artforum.com/print/197105, 13 November 2018

“A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.”

Diane Arbus

Source: Estrin, James, Diane Arbus, 1923-1971, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-diane-arbus.html, 6 November 2018, The New York Times, 8 March 2018]


Diane Arbus: Revelations. New York: Random House, 2003. ISBN 0-375-50620-9.


Ault, Alicia, A Window into the World of Diane Arbus: Photographs from the portfolio, "A box of 10," reveal photographer's secrets, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/window-world-diane-arbus-180968861/, 13 November 2018, Smithsonian, 24 April 2018

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