GERMAINE GREER BY DIANE ARBUS

I was flipping through a book on the photography of Diane Arbus and found that she had photographed the feminist provocateur Germaine Greer. I digged a little deeper and found this beautifully irascible quote from Greer regarding Arbus’s shooting style. So good! Love, Susie x

Diane arrived and immediately asked me to lie down on my bed. I was tired—I’d been flogging my book like mad—so I did what she told me. The all of a sudden she knelt on the bed and hung over me with this wide-angled lens staring me in the face and begun click-clicking away.  It developed into sort of a duel between us, because I resisted being photographed like that—close-up with all my pores and lines showing! She kept asking me all sorts of personal questions, and I became aware that she would only shoot when my face was showing tension or concern or boredom or annoyance (and there was plenty of that, let me tell you), but because she was a woman I didn’t tell her to fuck off. If she’d been a man, I’d have kicked her in the balls.