"The boys have done a bit of bird..."

Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, NYC, 1962
Originally uploaded by exiguousopificer.

Diane Arbus has got to be one of my very favorite photographers. I think the real key to art is not, necessarily, to have the right format, the perfect medium, the exact angle... it's all about eliciting emotion. And it doesn't have to be solely positive emotions, either. This is where Arbus gets things exactly right. She always tended toward photographs of those individuals considered unnatural by "normal" society. Her pictures seem to make the viewer feel a bit uncomfortable and splendidly awkward simply for staring at the types of things that we are taught to ignore.

For some reason I've had Robbie Williams, Tripping, in my head all day. "First they ignore you... then laugh at you and hate you. Then they fight you... then you win..."

Good stuff, good stuff... Nothing too eventful today. It started out splendidly, but pretty much went downhill after noon.