By M.Sebastian Araujo

Amy Arbus is an award winning NYC based Photographer whos work I have been awestruck by for sometime. We met a few years ago down a crooked alleyway in Ptown. She was photographing the faded odd looking puppets in the window of my antique shop we had chat, she snapped more pictures and I did not realize just who she was until later when I googled her work and was completely blown away by what I saw… Recently I had the privilege to find out just what makes the shutter on her camera click …

What in your world affects your creativity? I never get tired of watching people because there is always a subtext. Human beings betray their inner most secrets in their expressions, body language, and in the way they dress. They’re endlessly surprising, even to themselves.

With all the changes in technology, how do you feel they may have changed the Art/Photography scene today…? I’ve always taken pictures as an excuse to have an experience and take a version of it home with me. But now it seems, for most people, that the photograph is more important than the experience itself. It used to be that a portrait was a dialogue between a photographer and their subject with a unknown outcome. Now it is possible to pass judgement before the most revealing, powerful picture has even been made.

What makes people want to collect photography? Photographs can represent what the photographer has witnessed, or they can be an interpretation. Whether the subject matter is horrifying or mundane, universal symbols can make us laugh or break our hearts. Eddie Adams’s award winning, iconic, Vietnam photograph ‘Saigon Execution,’’ revealed the brutality committed by America’s ally.  That photograph changed people’s perception of the war. That is no small feat.

Was there a “shining light bulb” moment in your career when you realized that you were an artist? If so what was it? When I was growing up, the word “artist” wasn’t used in my family. I thought the word was synonymous with “dilettante.” In 1992, when I did my first assignment for Richard Avedon’s master class, I understood the power of photography to capture deep seated emotional responses to experiences I had had years earlier. It was then that I felt I had become an artist.

How do you know just when the right moment is to click the shutter to get the image you desire? I take a picture when I see something through my lens that is surprising and recognizable all at once.

What is it about Provincetown that keeps you and other Artists either living there or coming back again and again? In Provincetown, I feel the process of the artist is celebrated rather than just the finished work itself. When I’m there I feel safe, because I have the luxury of showing my mistakes as well as my successes which is essential to my growth as a photographer.

Amid the changes in this Crazy Old World of ours it is nice to know that the little haven of Art and Creativity snuggled nestled on the outermost tip of Cape Cod is still working its magic and sharing itself with the world. Hopefully Art and Artists and other Creative beings will always find a home here …some how I think it will!

For more information, please visit: www.galleryschoolhouse.com www.amyarbus.com www.paam.org