[Diane] was training herself to detect strangeness when it occurred in a lower key, in everyday life. She would stop people on a Lower East Side street or in a park, and talk to them, and start to shoot, capturing a wide range of postures and expressions. Back in the studio she would pick one image. Was it the true one? They were all true. She usually went with the one that conveyed the most dramatic, least absorbable sensation of difference.
"
-Holland Cotter
Teacher Influence
So did Lisette Model, a Viennese migr with whom Arbus studied briefly. Ms. Model didn't give her student much formal advice. Instead, she urged her to ease away from the stance of objectivity then considered requisite for serious photography and instead establish emotional relationships with her subjects, and see where that would take her. For Arbus, the advice was heaven-sent. It gave her permission to be the artist she was ready to be. "
-Holland Cotter
Mae West in her Bedroom , Santa Monica, California, 1965