Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
Publication, although very splendid, felt a little like an obituary.
When you grow up your mother says, “Wear rubbers or you’ll catch cold.” When you become an adult you discover that you have the right not to wear rubbers and to see if you catch cold or not. It’s something like that.
Meanwhile, please get me permissions, both posh and sordid... The more the merrier. We can’t tell in advance where the most interesting photographs will be. I can only get photographs by photographing. I will go anywhere.
(To Esquire magazine, 1959)
These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn’t it be lovely? Yes.
I’ve got incredible power in my closet. Not power to do harm—just the feeling that I’ve captured people who have since died and people who will never look that way again. The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.
What’s left after what one isn’t is taken away is what one is.
The process itself has a kind of exactitude, a kind of scrutiny that we’re not normally subject to. I mean that we don't subject each other to. We’re nicer to each other than the intervention of the camera is going to make us. It’s a little bit cold, a little bit harsh.
One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
