Nan Goldin
I have a confession to make ...
Sunday, 11 February 2024
This week I wanted to write about Nan Goldin but feel ambivalent about her photos. Don't get me wrong, I find her work compelling, it's just that I find them uncomfortably revealing.
Monday, 12 February 2024
With Nan Goldin, intimacy is the subject. The power of her images derives from her willingness to put the camera in places most people wouldn’t dare. Unlike Diane Arbus, Goldin is not an outsider looking in, she has been welcomed as one of the freaks.1 But it is disturbing when what appears to be private snapshots of friends and lovers end up as objects in galleries.
Goldin’s most famous photo shows her abusive lover, Brian, smoking a cigarette while she gazes up at him with a look of uncertainty. It is beautifully composed and incredibly well-lit, creating a movie in the mind of the viewer. It is raw and candid even though we know it must have been staged with a timer.
Tuesday, 13 February 2024
When I turned 18 I went interrailing around Europe with a friend. As a pair of suburbanites from Leicester, the idea of travelling anywhere outside Britain was exciting enough but we were unsure what to do with ourselves when we left the station. Fortunately, we had a copy of The Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget, which was quite clear on the matter: when in a European city you should visit museums. Apart from a couple of school trips, I had never really visited a gallery before, although I sensed that it was a cool thing to do.
The first stop was Paris. Home of the Impressionists. My family had a print of Monet’s poppy fields in the living room and we dutifully went to see the room of water lilies in l’Orangerie. I was unimpressed, it said nothing to me. Our next stop, however, was the mid-career retrospective of Nan Goldin, I'll Be Your Mirror, which was the complete opposite. It was real, too real: full of sex, drugs, nudity, and degradation. The perfect art for risk-taking teenagers.
Wednesday, 14 February 2024
Valentine’s Day. I received a beautiful card from L. The message in it was intensely personal, imparting what it means to be so deeply intertwined with someone you love. There is, no doubt, a thrill in sharing private moments in public, but those moments would immediately stop being intimate. And, without intimacy, there can be no close relationships.
Thursday, 15 February 2024
In his 1951 text ‘Kafka and His Precursors’, Jorge Luis Borges remarks that “each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.” Nan Goldin is, in the Borgesian sense, the key figure for understanding the social media era, even though she worked well before it came about.
Indeed, she was named the most influential person in art last year. This followed Laura Poitras’s superb documentary about her life, work and activism. As Mark Rappolt, editor-in-chief of Art Review, said: “[Goldin] anticipated many of the themes that are current in today’s culture: raw, confessional autobiography, queer identity, intersectional feminism, body autonomy and corporate ethics”.
Of these, the one I find most fascinating is the turn towards raw, confessional autobiography. It seems we are living in an age of unprecedented self-exposure with a lack of faith in our ability to transmute such truths into art.
Friday, 16 February 2024
Goldin’s relationship with Brian ended after he became jealous, read her private diary, burned it, and then battered her. When I was twelve, my private diary was read by someone and I was mocked for what it contained. Ever since I have found it impossible to write down anything that I wouldn’t care if it was read by someone else. What have I lost from being unable to write down a truly private thought?
People like Karl Ove Knausgård and Marie Calloway appeal to those who enjoy great writing while knowing that the writer has betrayed someone’s trust. Although Nan Goldin hasn’t provoked quite the same interpersonal controversy as those writers, her photographs have a similar appeal to the writers of autofiction. Such art sacrifices the dignity of a few people for the pleasure of millions. It is a utilitarian trade-off and one that I find unconscionable.
Saturday, 17 February 2024
The positive view of Goldin, which I share, is that she helped show the lives of marginalised people. Transsexuals, homosexuals, people with AIDS, and drug addicts were all featured in her photographs. At a time when people were being stigmatised in the press, Goldin shows compassion. This photograph of a man dying of AIDS being kissed on the nose by his partner is a courageous image.
“I didn’t care about ‘good’ photography. I cared about complete honesty.” Nan Goldin
The great thing about writing this series of posts about photographers is that they force me to probe my initial reactions. My initial fascination with Goldin turned to discomfort with the confessional mode and ended with empathy and respect. While the power of her photographs comes from their intimacy, there is enough in the sequence to show that her intentions were pure and the secrets were shared for a good reason.
The photographs in this article are used for criticism and review under the Fair Dealing provision of UK Copyright Law. All rights to the image remain with the photographer/copyright holder. This use does not claim any rights to the original work and is not for commercial purposes.
From a 1986 interview republished by Another Magazine:
MH: You never feel like a voyeur?
NG: The premise that a photographer is a voyeur by the nature of photography is just not true. The people who have been photographed extensively by me feel that my camera is as much a part of their life as any other aspect of their life with me. It then becomes perfectly natural to be photographed. It ceases to be an external experience and becomes a part of the relationship, which is heightened by the camera, not distanced. The camera connects me to the experience and clarifies what is going on between me and the subject. Some people believe that the photographer is always the last one invited to the party, but this is my party, I threw it.
A serious photographer is never a voyeur but rather a raconteur and sometimes a participant. Privacy in today’s world is more of an illusion like confidentiality. I just keep shooting …
"Uncomfortably revealing" definitely says it. Yet, the beauty of the images is out of this world.