Monday, March 7, 2011

America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly. key points

p.28 "No moment is more important than any other moment; no person is more interesting than any other person."

p. 31 "Each thing or person photographed becomes-a photograph; and becomes, therefore, morally equivalent to any other of his photographs."

p. 33 "For what would be more correctly described as their dissociated point of view, the photographs have been praised for their candor and for an unsentimental empathy with their subjects.  What is actually their aggressiveness toward the public has been treated as a moral accomplishment: that the photographs don't allow the viewer to be distant from the subject.

p.34 "'You can see someone on the street,' Arbus wrote, ' and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.'"

p.37 "Most Arbus pictures have the subjects looking strait into the camera.  This often makes them look even odder, almost deranged."