Diane takes photography and uses it in an introvert manner to explore herself and following that others around her, putting herself in between a persons appearance and who they are on the inside which enabled her to explore the links and contrasts that occur within people and their living with themselves. Some of the people she has photographed say that they don't recognise themselves in the photograph, its as though Diane captured a personality from underneath what was physically visible.
"Arbus captured their souls beneath their unblemished skin"
As I read more about photography and photojournalism I realise that a lot of the work is done before the aesthetics are even taken into account. The personality behind the camera itself has just as much influence as composing the shot and choosing when to press the shutter. Her work outside of taking the photo was her personality that would disarm her subjects until they relinquished their true selves, the selves that are underneath the front they show physically to the rest of the world.
""it was very perverse" she giggled, " its was slightly dirty" she squeaked, "it had a lot to do with not believing what i was told.""
Diane had the ability to step back and second guess that her subjects were only displaying what they wanted her to see and how they wanted to be perceived. I suppose everyone does this especially when a camera is put in front of them but as a practitioner taking a photo its important that i do not get drawn into my subjects to the point where I believe everything that I see and do not second guess it, more so the challenge here would be to get whats underneath that to come out even if its just for the split second the shutter opens and closes that way i will cross the bridge over into exposing the real them.
Aesthetically translating a true personality will be very hard but by infiltrating what is shown to me I will get the shots that truly represent what is rarely photographed. Doing it so that the subject doesn't even recognise themselves or what i'm doing will enable me to show them a picture of their personality, its very surreal to me that she could capture the aesthetics of personality but its something I personally haven't seen done before, to me Diane was well before her time she tapped into something that all photojournalist should be able to achieve, realism beyond physical representation.
