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

Categorized in : Mistake Photography Brightness

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.

Diane Arbus

softball motivational life

The world is full of fictional characters looking for their stories

Diane Arbus

stories character world

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.

Diane Arbus

photography inspirational believe

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

tests photography people

Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.

Diane Arbus

photography inspirational night

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

Diane Arbus

philosophical photography inspirational

It's important to take bad pictures. It's the bad ones that have to do with what you've never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn't seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again.

Diane Arbus

important done way

We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.

Diane Arbus

left identity

Take pictures of what you fear.

Diane Arbus

photographer

Lately I've been struck with how I really love what you can't see in a photograph. An actual physical darkness. And it's very thrilling for me to see darkness again.

Diane Arbus

photograph photography darkness

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. It's just extraordinary that we should have been given these peculiarities. Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it.

Diane Arbus

ironic should-have people

If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life. I mean people are going to say, You're crazy. Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.

Diane Arbus

crazy photography mean

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

mean-girls awkward photography

Shoot for the secrets, develop for the surprises

Diane Arbus

surprise secret

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

photography adventure thinking

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

Diane Arbus

nature photography life

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

mixtures my-best-friend mean

Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.

Diane Arbus

understanding witty love

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

Diane Arbus

photography taken inspirational

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

Diane Arbus

uplifting success inspirational