A Quote by Diane Arbus

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them. — © Diane Arbus
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
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.
Nobody really knows who I am, where I came from, what's in my heart, why I believe in the things I believe, what I see behind the scenes and they don't see.
I'll see a photograph of a character and try to copy them on to my face. I think I'm really observant, and thinking how a person is put together, seeing them on the street and noticing subtle things about them that make them who they are.
How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobiles, and people with a reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.
I'm good at using my face as a canvas… I'll see a photograph of a character and try to copy them on to my face. I think I'm really observant, and thinking how a person is put together, seeing them on the street and noticing subtle things about them that make them who they are.
A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.
I believe in myself and I know I'm capable of doing certain things that nobody can really do, I would say.
If you could see a photograph of what it took to make an advertising photograph - things you don't think about, like the photo assistant carefully arranging the meatballs - the degree of unnaturalness would be astonishing. Yet it produces an image that looks natural, and is orchestrated to provoke basic emotional responses.
We have certain things where we know they exist or "everybody knows they exist," but naturally nobody can photograph them, because they are so super secret. For example, the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center exists, but nobody knows how it looks, but it's a so called bunker where he can survive a nuclear attack.
When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over and you're strong and you can handle it. But a lot of people can't handle it. And they see horror stories. They see events that you couldn't see in a movie, nobody would believe it.
To all the little girls out there, I would tell them to really appreciate what their parents do for them. And also to truly believe in their dream. If they truly believe that they're capable, things will happen for them - as long as they put in the work, of course.
If I could find them (assemblages) in nature I would photograph them. I make them because through photography I have a knowledge of things that can't be found.
A good photograph will prove to the viewer how little our eyes permit us to see. Most people, really, don’t see-see only what they have always seen and what they expect to see-where a photographer, if he’s good, will see everything. And better if he sees things he doesn’t expect to see.
Nobody would take checks from Indians, nobody would give them any credit, and nobody would let them drink in the bars. There was a rudeness, a brusqueness, with which the Indians were treated constantly. At a very young age, that had entered my consciousness.
At the end of the day, it's only a photograph and if someone is going to get really upset about a photograph, then they have a lot of issues. I just roll with it and see what happens.
Every one of us have things that we believe about ourselves when nobody else is looking, nobody else is listening, nobody else is monitoring what we're doing. We believe things about ourself.
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