Diane Arbus Called Her Portraits ‘A Secret About a Secret’

Diane Arbus at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1970, holding a copy of “Child with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962.” Stephen A. Frank

Diane Arbus was a daughter of privilege who spent much of her adult life documenting those on the periphery of society. Since she killed herself in 1971, her unblinking portraits have made her a seminal figure in modern-day photography and an influence on three generations of photographers, though she is perhaps just as famous for her unconventional…

via Diane Arbus Called Her Portraits ‘A Secret About a Secret’

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The Hand Through the Fence: Pablo Neruda on What a Childhood Encounter Taught Him About Writing and Why We Make Art | Brain Pickings

“To feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know … widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.”

Since our cave-dwelling days, the question of why we make art and why we enjoy it has haunted us as a perennial specter of the human experience. For Leo Tolstoy, it was about the transference of “emotional infectiousness”; for Jeanette Winterson, about “active surrender”; for Oscar Wilde, about cultivating a “temperament of receptivity.”

That question is what beloved Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda answers with unparalleled elegance in a short essay from the early 1950s titled “Childhood and Poetry,” found in the altogether enchanting collection Neruda and Vallejo (public library).

Neruda relays an anecdote from his childhood that profoundly influenced not only his poetry but also…

via The Hand Through the Fence: Pablo Neruda on What a Childhood Encounter Taught Him About Writing and Why We Make Art | Brain Pickings.