Saturday, August 06, 2011

Diane Arbus’ Dark Secrets

A new biography of the iconic photographer is filled with revelations about her sexual life and allegations of incest—but only adds to her artistic legacy. Olivia Cole speaks to the author about his sensitive approach to understanding her.

With extraordinary interviews with new sources, William Todd Schultz’s An Emergency in Slow Motion: The Inner Life of Diane Arbus, to be published on August 30th, promises to be an explosive contribution to what’s known about Diane Arbus, whose influence and value in the art world has soared since her death in 1971, at the age of 48

From her iconic photographs of twins, shy swingers, and surly teens in Washington Park to her Coney Island circus acts, Arbus’s work is instantly recognizable: an unflinching yet often strangely lyrical vision of the oddity of normality, and the normality of oddity. But for all the interest in her work, even including a fictionalized portrayal on screen by Nicole Kidman in Fur, the woman herself remains out of focus.

Full piece at Book Beast.

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