YouTube Transcript: Masters of photography - Diane Arbus (documentary, 1972)
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mother which means that the way in which
I knew her was in terms of
a a kind of familiarity that I took for granted
granted
uh as you have to if you live with
somebody um
um the way I knew her photographs I mean
some of them still to me I remember
remember
as as torn pieces of of paper that she
would bring bring back from the dark
room I remember them tacked on walls you
know around her bed or on this wooden
live and I had an enormous sense
that that photography was a kind
of Secret of hers I don't mean that the
process was secret or that or that she
was secretive about it because she
really loved to to to tell about it and
she loved to tell about sort of where
she'd gone and who she'd been with and
uh but that something about what
happened when she was there uh was a secret
I think it may have something to do
with uh the way in which she grew up she
grew up in New York um mostly on Central Park
Park
West and her father owned rustics which
was this huge Fifth Avenue department
store and there was a
sense about her whole childhood and
again I mean as I heard it from her it
sort of filtered in so that now I don't
know I really feel like I knew it I mean
I used to feel as a kid like I'd been
there there was an enormous sense of
what was prohibited
prohibited
uh and I think that photographing for
being able to discover that prohibitions didn't
didn't
apply in July 1971 my mother committed suicide
suicide
and shortly after that Marvin Israel a
very close friend of hers and
I felt that we wanted to do a book of
her work
together so we
began collecting not just the pictures
but sort of whatever material we could
find in
1970 she had given a class in West Beth
which was where she
lived and we found out that one of the
students in that class was a Japanese
photographer named EO
narahara who admired Dean's work
enormously uh the problem was that he
barely spoke any English at all so what
he had done was to go to the classes and
bring along a tape recorder
to record everything that was said so
that afterwards he could go home and see
if he could try and understand it
um so he lent us those tapes the tapes
were of very poor quality so we asked
Mary Clair Costello who was a friend of
Dean's to read deanne's own words over
glimpses of Dean's
photographs my favorite thing is to go
where I've never been for me there's
something just about going into somebody
else's house house when it comes time to
go if I have to take a bus to somewhere
or if I have to take a cab up town it's
like I've got a blind date in a sense
it's always seemed something like that
to me and sometimes I have a sinking
feeling of oh God it's time and I really
don't want to go and then once I'm on my
way something terrific takes over about
the sort of queasiness of it and how
there's absolutely no method for
control 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 and for a lot of people they
want to be paid that much attention and
that's a reasonable kind of attention to be
paid actually they tend to like
me I'm extremely likable with them I
think I'm kind of
two-faced I'm very
ingratiating it really kind of annoys me
I'm just sort of a little too nice
everything is oh and I hear myself
saying how terrific and here's this
woman making a face I really mean it's
terrific I don't mean I wish I looked
like that I don't mean I wish my
children looked like that
I don't mean in my private life I want
to kiss you but I mean that's amazingly undeniably
undeniably
something there are always two things
that happen one is recognition and the
other is that it's totally
peculiar but there's some sense in which
I always identify with them everybody
has that thing where they need to look
one way but they come out looking
another way and that's what people observe
observe
you see somebody 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 and not content with what
we were given we create a whole other
set our whole guise is like giving a
sign to the world to think of us in a
certain way but there's a point between
what you want people to know about you
and what you can't help people knowing
about you and that has to do with what
I've always called the gap between
intention and effect I mean if you
scrutinize reality closely enough if in
some way you really really get to it it becomes
becomes
fantastic you know it really is totally
fantastic that we look like this and you
sometimes see that very clearly in a
photograph 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
what I'm trying to describe is that it's
impossible to get out of your skin into
somebody else's and that's what all this
is a little bit about that somebody
else's tragedy is not the same as your
own another thing is a photograph has to be
be
specific I remember a long time ago when
I first began to photograph I thought
there are an awful lot of people in the
world and it's going to be terribly hard
to photograph all of them so if I
photograph some kind of generalized
human being everybody will recognize it
it'll be like what they used to call the
Common Man or something like that it was
my teacher liette Modell who finally
made it clear to me that the more
specific you are the more General it'll
be you really have to face that
thing and there are certain evasions
certain nesses that I think you have to
get out
of the process itself has a kind of
exactitude a kind of scrutiny that we're
not normally subject to I mean that we
don't subject each other to we're nicer
to each other than the intervention of
the camera is going to make us it's a
little bit cold a little bit harsh now I
don't mean to say that all photographs
have to be
mean sometimes they show something
really nicer in fact than what you felt
or oddly
different but in a way this scrutiny has
to do with not evading facts not evading
what it really looks
like 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 there's a quality of
legend about Freaks Like a person in a
fairy tale who stops you and demands
that you answer a riddle I
mean if you've ever spoken to someone
with two heads you know they know
something you
don't most people go through life
dreading they'll have a traumatic
experience freaks were born with their
trauma they've already passed their test
Aristocrats I'm very little drawn to
photographing people that are known or
even subjects that are
known they fascinate me when I've barely
heard of them and the minute they get
public I become terribly blank about
them from the beginning she started to
photograph completely differently from
other people but this difference was a
difference she wanted it was a
preconceived difference to be by all
means and under all
circumstances original and
unique and then it had to be explained
to her
that there are great artists in every
era who are so new and so different that
nobody can understand them the ears or
the eyes are not used to it and they
maybe the ones who really contribute to
the medium but at the same time there
are other artists and they work also in
a non understandable kind of a way
nobody could understand what they are
doing and they are form and they work
with Illusions and
Fantasies and that this kind of a
difference is extremely important to
understand so Dian said to me you know
she said I went to the school of
cultural ethical culture where a child
whatever a child did was considered the
work of a genius so I had never an
occasion to find out what's good what's
bad what's Tru and what's false and from
that moment on Dian did not bring any
more of these pictures and she started
in another way she had an
enormous different kind of wide subject matter
matter
range and besides the subject matter she
had unusual things she had also her
specific subject matter which of course
was the most important which was to
photograph freaks homosexuals
homosexuals
lesbians cripples sick people dying
people dead
people but she did it very differently
from other people you see most people
look away when they see the subject
matter whereas Dian did not look away
and that takes courage and Independence
and I think it is the first time as far
as I know in history of photography that
somebody would photograph this kind of
people who are discriminated and are
afraid to look at them because deep down
in ourselves we feel we are still
crippled somewhere even if it isn't
outside and she photographed them
humanly seriously and functioning in
their lives and that was an
extraordinary kind of an achievement she
said once to me she wanted to have
Stillness in her
photographs and she posed everybody
either in the streets
or in their
homes and let them look directly at her
or into the
camera and by doing so one would have
meant believed that that would freeze
the picture but it was just the opposite her
her
influence upon these people and their
reaction to her made the picture as
spontaneous as if it were not posed that
one of the things I felt I suffered from
as a kid was I never felt
adversity I was confirmed in a sense of
unreality which I could only feel as
unreality and that sense of being immune
was ludicrous as it seems a painful
one it was as if I didn't inherit my own
kingdom for a long
time the world seemed to me to belong to
the world
I could learn things but they never
seemed to be my own
experience I wasn't a child with
tremendous yearnings I didn't worship
Heroes I didn't long to play the piano
or anything I did paint but I hated
painting and I quit right after high
school because I was continually told
how terrific I was it was like
self-expression time and I was in a
private school and their tendency was to
say what would you like to do and then
you did something and they said how terrific
terrific
it made me feel
shaky I remember I hated the smell of
the paint and the noise it would make
when I put my brush to the paper
sometimes I would not really look but
just listen to this horrible sort of
squish squish
squish I didn't want to be told I was
terrific I had a sense that if I was so
terrific at it it wasn't worth
doing I like to put things up around my
bed all the time pictures of mine that I
like and other things and I change it
every month or so there's some funny
subliminal thing that happens it isn't
just looking at it it's looking at it
when you're not looking at it it really
begins to act on you in a funny
way I suppose a lot of these
observations are bound to be after the
fact I mean there nothing you can do to
yourself to get yourself to work you
can't make yourself work by putting up
something beautiful on the wall or by knowing
knowing
yourself very often knowing yourself
isn't really going to lead you anywhere
sometimes it's going to leave you kind
of blank like here I am there's a me
I've got a history I've got things that
are mysterious to me in the world and
I've got things that bug me in the world
but there are moments when all that
Avail each photograph for Dean was an
event and it could be said although it
could be argued that for Dean the most
valuable thing wasn't the photograph
itself the art object it was the event
the experience I mean she was
absolutely moved by every single event
that took place and she would narrate
them in detail and she wouldn't just say
I took a photograph of so and so in
their home but it was the going there
the being there the dialogue that came
back and forth the the moments of even
just waiting and and no no talk it was
an incredibly personal thing and once
you've once you become an adventurer
because Dean was really an adventurer
she went places that no one had ever
gone to they were scary and once you
have become an adventurer you're geared
to Adventure you seek out Further
Adventures and your life is really based
upon them and i' I've said that the
photograph is like her trophy it's what
she received as the reward for this
adventure just like some guy climbs M
Everest you know and he has a flag in
his hand and you see him there deian has the
the
photograph I used to have a theory about
photographing it was a sense of getting
in between two actions or in between
action and
Repose I don't mean to make a big deal
of it it was just like an I didn't see
or wouldn't have
seen one of the excitements of strobe at
one time was that you were essentially
blind at the moment you took the picture
I mean it Alters light enormously and
reveals things you don't see in fact
that's what made me really sick of it I
began to miss light like it really is
and now I'm trying to get back to some
kind of obscurity where at least there's normal
obscurity lately I've been struck with
how I really love love what you can't
see in a photograph an actual physical
Darkness it's very thrilling for me to
see Darkness
again what's thrilling to me about
what's called technique I hate to call
it that because it sounds like something
up your sleeve but what moves me about
it is that it comes from some mysterious deep
deep
place I mean it can have something to do
with the paper and the developer and all
that stuff but it comes mostly from some
very deep choices somebody has made that
take a long time and keep haunting
them invention is mostly this kind of
subtle inevitable thing people get
closer to the beauty of their invention
they get narrower and more particular in
it invention has a lot to do with a
certain kind of light some people have
and with the print quality and the
choice of subject it's a million choices
you make it's luck in a sense or even
ill luck some people hate a kind of
complexity others only want that
complexity but none of that is really
intentional I mean it comes from your
nature your
identity we've all got an identity you
can't avoid it it's what's left when you
take everything else
away I think the camera is something of
a nuisance in a way it's recalc
it's determined to do one thing and you
may want it to do something else and you
have to fuse what you want and what the
camera wants it's like a horse well
that's a bad comparison because I'm not
much of a horseback rider but I mean you
get to learn what it will do I've worked
with a couple of them one will be
terrific in certain situations or I can
make it be terrific another will be very
dumb but sometimes I kind of like that
dumbness if it'll do you
know I get a great sense that they're
different from me I don't feel that
total identity with the machine I mean I
can work it fine although I'm not so
great actually sometimes when I'm
winding it it'll get stuck or something
will go wrong and I just start clicking
everything and suddenly very often it's
all right again that's my feeling about
machines if you sort of look the other
way they'll get fixed except for certain ones
very often when you go to photograph
it's like you're going for an event say
it's a beauty contest you picture it in
your mind a little bit that there will
be these people who be the judges and
they'll be choosing the winner from all
these contestants and then you go there
and it's not like that at all very often
an event happens scattered and the
account of it will look to you in your
mind like it's going to be very straight and
and
photographable but actually one person
is over there and another person is over
here and they don't get together even
when you go to do a family you want to
show the whole family but how often are
the mother and father and the two kids
all on the same side of the room unless
there 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
arrang myself I remember one summer I
worked a lot in Washington Square Park
it must have been about
1966 and the park was divided it had
these walks sort of like a Sunburst and
there were these territories staked out
there were young hippie junkies down one
row there were lesbians down another
really tough amazingly hardcore lesbians
and in the middle were wios they were
like the first Echelon and the girls who
came from the Bronx to become hippies
would have to sleep with the wios to get
to sit on the other part with the junky
hippies it was really
remarkable and I found it very
scary I mean I could become a million
things but I could never become that
whatever all those people
were there were days I just couldn't do
it and then there were days I could and
then having done it a little I could do it
it
more I got to know a few of them I hung
around a lot they were very much like SC
sculptures in a funny way I was very
keen to get very close to them so I had
to ask to photograph them you can't get
that close to somebody and not say a
that I have this funny thing which is
that I'm never afraid when I'm looking
in the ground glass this person could be
approaching with a gun or something like
that and I'd have my eyes glued to the
finder and it wasn't like I was really
vulnerable it just seemed terrific what
was happening I mean I'm sure there are
limits God knows when the troops start
advancing on me you do approach that
stricken feeling where you perfectly can get
get
killed but there's a kind of power thing
about the camera I mean everyone knows
you've got some Edge you're carrying
some slight magic which does something
to them it fixes them in a
way I used to think I was shy and I got
incredibly persistent in the shyness I
remember enjoying enormously the
situation of being put off and having to
wait I still do I suppose I used the
waiting time for a kind of nervousness
for getting calm or I don't know just
waiting it isn't such a productive time
it's a really boring time I remember
once I went to this female impersonator
club and I waited about 4 hours and then
I couldn't photograph and they told me
to come back another night but somehow I
learned to like that experience because
while being bored I was also entranced I
mean it was boring but it was also
mysterious people would
pass and also I had a sense of what
there was to photograph that I couldn't
actually photograph which I think is
quite enjoyable
sometimes the Chinese have a theory that
you pass through boredom into
Fascination and I think it's
true I would never choose a subject for
what it means to me or what I think
about it you just choose a subject and
what you feel about it what it means
begins to unfold if you just plain
choose a subject and do it
enough so much of phography has been
concerned perhaps especially in recent decades
with making the photograph look good
almost with a kind of visual Athletics perhaps
perhaps
uh with formal games that can be played
so well and so enchantingly and
fascinatingly with
photography or
with more peripheral
problems such
as how to make photography look
like other Fine
Arts Diane knew
that Edward Steen said once that photog
phography was born
perfect and Diane knew
that she
knew that it's
absolutely simplest most primitive most
direct and unembellished
way the the problem for the photographer
was simply to understand absolutely and
with precision and with uh sensitivity
and with complete Clarity what it was
that was out there that you were looking
at and what were
the what were the secret
meanings that that exist forever whever one
one
looks if one looks with enough
intuitions the the influence that she's
had has been simply enormous because
look when all of us when we first looked
at Diane's pictures it was almost as
though almost as though we were starting
again as we were back in the days of the
deera type where back in the days of
Matthew Brady and it was it was it was a new
new
Fresh unused medium
again all the all the fanciness had been
Stripped Away and all that was left
was the marvelous
clear airless uh experience of Life
absolutely without any interposition of
of concern for effect or concern
for in a sense any concern for art
that's a of course that's a that's not
really true she was always an artist and
she knew she was an artist her way of
being an artist you know was was to
conceal that fact as as fully as she
pictures the thing that's important to
know is that you never know you're
way one thing that struck me very early
is that you don't put into a photograph
what's going to come out or vice versa
in I never have taken a photograph I've
worse for me the subject of the picture
is always more important than the
picture and more
complicated I do have a feeling for the
print but I don't have a holy feeling
for it I really think what it is is what
it's about I mean it has to be of
something and what it's of is always
more remarkable than what it is I do
feel I have some slight corner on
things I mean it's very subtle and a
little embarrassing to
me but I really believe there are things
which nobody would see unless I
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