An Emergency in Slow Motion: The Inner Life of Diane Arbus - Hardcover

Schultz, William Todd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1608195198 ISBN 13: 9781608195190

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2011

Synopsis

Diane Arbus was one of the most brilliant and revered photographers in the history of American art. Her portraits, in stark black and white, seemed to reveal the psychological truths of their subjects. But after she committed suicide in 1971, at the age of forty-eight, the presumed chaos and darkness of her own inner life became, for many viewers, inextricable from her work.

In the spirit of Janet Malcolm's classic examination of Sylvia Plath, The Silent Woman, William Todd Schultz's An Emergency in Slow Motion reveals the creative and personal struggles of Diane Arbus. Schultz veers from traditional biography to interpret Arbus's life through the prism of four central mysteries: her outcast affinity, her sexuality, the secrets she kept and shared, and her suicide. He seeks not to diagnose Arbus, but to discern some of the private motives behind her public works and acts. In this approach, Schultz not only goes deeper into Arbus's life than any previous writer, but provides a template with which to think about the creative life in general.

Schultz's careful analysis is informed, in part, by the recent release of some of Arbus's writing and work by her estate, as well as by interviews with Arbus's psychotherapist. An Emergency in Slow Motion combines new revelations and breathtaking insights into a must-read psychobiography about a monumental artist-the first new look at Arbus in twenty-five years.

About this title

About the Author:

William Todd Schultz is a professor of psychology at Pacific University in Oregon, focusing on personality research and psychobiography. He edited and contributed to the groundbreaking Handbook of Psychobiography, and curates the book series Inner Lives, analyses of significant artists and political figures. His own book in the series, Tiny Terror, examines the life of Truman Capote. Todd Schultz blogs for Psychology Today.

Review:

"Absorbing analysis of [Arbus's] life... The book builds up to its final theory that Arbus's art served as an "accelerant" for her suicide. The dark nature of the work sucked her deeper into her personal abyss." --The Independent

"Armed with interviews with her psychotherapist as well as autobiographical fragments, this new "psychobiography" sheds light on Arbus's opaque personality. Above all, [Schultz] shows how the photographer projected her inner torment and sense of estrangement onto her unsuspecting sitters." --The Economist

"Schultz sifts and shapes his material with flair, working towards [Arbus's] death with all the planning of a good thriller. The temptation with any artist suicide, he warns us, is to find the "dark calculus" in their art. His triumph lies in making her suicide the one thing you don't see when you return to her images. -The Telegraph

"Poignant and provocative, An Emergency in Slow Motion offers an entirely new way of relating to and understanding one of the most revered and influential postmodern photographers, in the process raising timeless and universal questions about otherness, the human condition, and the quest for making peace with the self." -Brain Pickings

"Like her pictures, this dark inner life is not pretty... but it is discomfortingly enlightening." --Shelf Awareness

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1608195198
• ISBN 13: 9781608195190
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256