“Arbus was the photographer America never wanted, but always deserved. She was the first to show us what’s wrong with the country in a non-documentary way. It’s difficult to imagine how subsequent dissident clickers of the country’s uglier private reaches would have fared without her example. In order to understand why she did what she did, I think we have to take her at her word when she said she really did intend to photograph everyone out there. What she means is that she didn’t go looking for her subjects; rather, they came to her.”

A review of Diane Arbus’s Berlin retrospective at Whitehot Magazine.