I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present. I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful.
Diane ArbusRead
I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where Iβve never been.
Interpretation
Photography is viewed as an exciting journey of exploration.
Diane Arbus perceives photography not merely as a technical activity but as an adventurous experience. She enjoys the thrill of discovering new places and moments through her lens, highlighting how exploration and creativity are intertwined in the artistic process of capturing images.
In practice
In a photography workshop, I shared this quote to inspire participants to explore new locations.
I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present. I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful.
... I must begin at whatever pace is possible, to work on the book of my own that i vaguely keep assuming lies at the end of the rainbow. It is after all my rainbow and if I don't do it no one else will...Survival is the secret so you really can't afford to doubt yourself for long because you are all you've got. The only thing to do is to go the limit with it. Exceed.
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 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.
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.
It's always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction.
Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.
None of my other investments give me the joy that autographs do because they make me feel that I am holding a piece of history in my hands.
One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.
My mother likes what I cook, but doesn't think it's French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I'm the quintessential French chef.
He asked, "what makes a man a writer?" "well," I said, "it's simple, it's either you get it down on paper or you jump off a bridge. writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers." "are you desperate?" "I don't know.
One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.
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