A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. |
Amy Arbus: Rites and Rituals |
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. |
I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse. |
I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse. |
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them. |
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph 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 gets to seem as if way back in the Garden of Eden after the Fall, Adam and Eve had begged the Lord to forgive them and He, in his boundless exasperation, had said, ''All right, then. Stay. Stay in the Garden. Get civilized. Procreate. Muck it up.'' And they did. |
Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding |
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. |
My favorite thing is to go where I've never been |
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. |
Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. |