“Photography is 1% talent and 99% moving furniture”
~ Arnold Newman
“I love New York even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it”
~ Truman Capote
Arnold of course is being somewhat modest here. He had an enormous talent and was the father of environmental portraiture. He was an immense character in his own right. He just loved to talk. He would call me up about some business matter and I could put the phone down, make myself a sandwich and come back 20 mins later and he would still be talking. But I loved him and all his stories and he sure had a remarkable gift for extracting the essence of whoever he was photographing that day. He met his match with Truman Capote and probably had to move a lot of furniture in Capote’s over the top NY apartment. But there he is in all his camp splendor. One of the great 20th Century writers who could go from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s" to “In Cold Blood” at the drop of a typewriter.
