Diane Arbus’s photographs changed not only Americans, but people around the world, showing them how shunning those who were disabled was cruel and unjust to society.
Her lack of judging people and her endless curiosity awed me. She's always curious of the world and people. And rather than changing them in different ways, she's just curious about whatever qualities they might have or not have. I think this was important to Arbus's place or time in history. I think up until Arbus, I used to think that you took a picture of someone for a particular reason, they had something to represent that was important for people to know. The person was a hero, or someone poor, and we needed to congratulate them or think about how to help them. What I think was so revolutionary was that she took pictures of people that were not important at all. She went everywhere, anywhere, and took pictures of anyone. They represented humanity, mystery, dignity in all the subjects she approached. She has a reputation as a photographer of freaks, but if you count up all of her photos, most of her pictures are of normal, everyday people. She was photographer of ordinariness, of the unremarkable that characterized her. She looked more at the extraordinary in the ordinary. And that extraordinary in that time are now considered by our society the good things. She was very interested with people with hardships, aristocrats, that notion of everyone in one way or another being aristocrats. She was looking for that hidden element. There is often a sense of humor in there. She never gives a fully transparent window. She takes snapshots that aren't quite clear, always with some humor in there. It gives a sense of enjoyment to the viewer. To some extent, Arbus wasn't always neutral. She was sometimes smiling after.
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-Philip Charrier, Professor of Photography History