And after her flew the completely insane waltz

“I don’t look at photography as a narrative device. It’s best at revealing all sorts of ghostly little fragments of the complexity of the world. It’s restrictive and completely open all at once. A big part of photography for me is recognizing its limitations, while trying to tap into its many layers of expression.”

Not staged but nudged into being

The men didn't think much of her bright color, so she made it brighter. The men yearned toward Europe so she went to Texas, and then New Mexico. The men talked about Cézanne, "long involved remarks about the 'plastic quality' of his form and color," and too one another's long involved remarks, in the view of this angelic rattlesnake in their midst, altogether too seriously. "I can paint one of those dismal-colored paintings like the men," the woman who regarded herself always like an outsider remembers thinking one day in 1922, and she did: ' a painting of a shed "all low-toned and dreary with the tree beside the door." She called this act of rancor "The Shanty" and hung it in her next show. "The men seemed to approve of it," she reported fifty-four years later, her contempt undimmed.

What if the real attraction of the internet is not its cutting-edge bells and whistles, its jazzy interface, or any of the advanced technology that underlies its pipes and wires? What if, instead, the attraction is an atavistic throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales?

If you don’t have time to write, stop answering the phone. Change your email address. Kill your television. If you don’t have a baby, have one. If you have a baby, get a sitter. If you work too much, work more. If you don’t work enough, work less. If there’s a problem, exaggerate it. If you’re broke, go to the food bank. If you have too much money, give it away. If you’re north, go south.

Photography is so democratic because it is so accessible. But that doesn’t mean that anyone can produce—in all this democracy—anything of value. You have to bring insight. And the only thing most photographers do is description. They’re still doing the Diane Arbus.