There are times when I put aside the camera. Forgo the image. When I say to myself, this minute would make a great picture, but it'll be ruined/over if I get out my camera. More of an intrusion than I want to be. For example, recently Bob and Eila were talking easily at dusk in the backyard. Eila telling Bob how much The Gold Diggers meant to her when she read it fifteen years ago in Chicago. How she still loves her copy of it, the small first edition, hand set and printed in Majorca. I watch them from the kitchen window. There is still light; the Housebook could use a casual backyard picture, I tell my self. I am dying to get my camera and go outside with them. But I know I'll change their whole scene if I do. I don't take the picture. Charlie Olchowski once told me Diane Arbus would do anything for a photograph -- absolutely anything, go anywhere, to get what she wanted. Befriend anyone. Expose herself to all kinds of relationships with all kinds of people. Since by now I know I have limits and see what pictures I miss because of them, I can understand how that willingness to go forward, that final act to do it, get it, take it is fundamental to her genius. It separates her from all the rest of us.
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