I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't

Host: The gallery was nearly empty. Only the soft buzz of overhead lights and the faint echo of shoes on polished concrete disturbed the silence. The walls were white — blank as confession — and along them hung the photographs of Diane Arbus: faces that stared back too directly, too honestly, as though daring the viewer to look away.

The images were all in black and white — twins standing shoulder to shoulder with identical blankness, a boy with a toy hand grenade frozen mid-anger, a woman in curlers gazing at her own reflection like it was another person entirely.

In the middle of that cathedral of stillness, Jack stood with his hands in his coat pockets, staring at a photograph longer than was comfortable.

Jeeny stood beside him, her head tilted slightly, her dark eyes soft with thought. She spoke, her voice just above a whisper — as if she didn’t want to disturb the ghosts hanging on the walls.

Jeeny: “Diane Arbus once said, ‘I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.’”

Jack: (without looking away) “That’s not humility. That’s declaration. She’s not saying she sees differently — she’s saying she reveals differently.”

Host: A light hum filled the air — the kind of silence that vibrates. Jack’s reflection trembled faintly on the glass of the framed print — his grey eyes staring back at his own face beside the strange boy’s grin.

Jeeny: “She meant that art is witness. That truth hides in plain sight, and most people walk past it. She stopped and captured it — the odd, the uncomfortable, the real.”

Jack: “Truth? Or intrusion? You think those people wanted to be seen like this? Vulnerable, strange, exposed?”

Jeeny: “Maybe not. But that’s the paradox — visibility is both pain and immortality. Arbus didn’t exploit; she documented what everyone else pretended didn’t exist.”

Jack: (scoffs) “You sound like her defense lawyer. Let’s call it what it is: voyeurism with good lighting. She made freaks into art.”

Jeeny: (sharply) “Freaks? That’s exactly the point, Jack. She didn’t make them freaks. Society already did. She just refused to look away.”

Host: The light from above flickered, illuminating the glossy surfaces — the captured lives staring back with strange serenity. Jack stepped closer to one image — a giant woman, towering but graceful, her face unreadable.

Jack: “So she’s a mirror for what we won’t admit. That we like to observe difference as long as we don’t have to understand it.”

Jeeny: “No. She’s a mirror for what we fear — that difference isn’t them, it’s us. Her lens didn’t isolate her subjects. It revealed our discomfort watching them.”

Jack: “So photography becomes confession.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. And honesty is never comfortable.”

Host: The rain began outside — faint, rhythmic, almost polite. It tapped against the glass windows of the gallery, echoing faintly like slow applause.

Jack: “You know, I wonder if she ever put the camera down and just looked — without capturing. Or if she was too afraid that seeing without recording meant the moment would die.”

Jeeny: “I think she understood that the act of looking changes what’s seen. Maybe that’s why she photographed — to freeze the distortion, to prove it existed.”

Jack: (quietly) “You ever think photographers are lonely people?”

Jeeny: “Why?”

Jack: “Because they spend their lives watching others live.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe they’re the only ones who do live — by noticing.”

Host: Jack turned toward her then. Her face, half-lit by the gallery’s cold light, looked like one of the portraits — vulnerable, defiant, deeply alive.

Jack: “You think we all see the same world?”

Jeeny: “No. We all see fragments. The artist’s curse is to believe they can stitch them together.”

Jack: “And Arbus?”

Jeeny: “She stitched with empathy — raw, messy empathy. She didn’t beautify pain; she dignified it by not denying it.”

Host: A gust of wind rattled the windows. Somewhere, a door creaked open — the sound hollow in the gallery’s acoustics. The moment felt suspended, like time itself was waiting to exhale.

Jack: “You ever think about what it means to see someone completely? No filters, no performance. Just… them.”

Jeeny: (softly) “It’s terrifying. But it’s also love.”

Jack: (turning back to the photographs) “Maybe that’s what her work really is — love without comfort.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Love without control. She saw people not as they wanted to appear, but as they were. And in doing that, she became both creator and confessor.”

Host: The rain grew heavier now, streaking the glass with silver lines. The reflections of the photographs blurred and shimmered, faces melting into water and light.

Jack: “You know… maybe that’s why her pictures unsettle people. They’re not about others — they’re about us. We look at them and see what we hide from.”

Jeeny: “That’s the power of her belief — that seeing isn’t passive. It’s moral. It’s responsibility. She believed in seeing what nobody else would, because that’s how empathy begins.”

Jack: “So you’re saying beauty isn’t the opposite of discomfort — it’s born from it.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Beauty isn’t perfection; it’s truth witnessed. Arbus showed us the humanity in the distorted and the distortion in the human.”

Host: A single light bulb above them flickered, buzzing like an insect caught in eternity. The sound of the rain softened again, tapering into a gentle hush.

Jack: “You think she was ever happy? Carrying that much honesty must weigh heavy.”

Jeeny: “Maybe not happy. But fulfilled. Some people aren’t meant to live peacefully — they’re meant to live truthfully.”

Jack: (nodding slowly) “Maybe that’s why her work still hurts to look at. It’s not nostalgia — it’s confrontation.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Every photograph is a mirror we didn’t ask for.”

Host: The gallery lights dimmed slightly as closing hour approached. A guard in the distance checked his watch, indifferent to the quiet revelation unfolding near the exit.

Jack turned once more to the photograph of the boy with the grenade — his wild eyes, his small, clenched fist, his frozen innocence halfway to violence.

Jack: (whispering) “She caught the exact second between childhood and war.”

Jeeny: “That’s what she did best — captured transitions. The invisible spaces between who we are and who we become.”

Host: Jeeny took a final look at the photographs, then turned toward the door. Jack lingered, his gaze fixed on the frozen faces staring back at him, each one a universe, each one unfinished.

Host: “And in that hush between light and shadow,” the world seemed to whisper, “they understood Diane Arbus’s truth — that to see is to care, to reveal is to redeem, and that beauty often lives not in perfection, but in the courage to face what others would rather ignore.”

The door closed behind them. The gallery fell silent again. Inside, the portraits remained — unblinking, unafraid — still seeing everything no one else would.