Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is a photographer who rose to recognition in the 1970s. She recently had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2016 but her work has been shown all over the world and is continued to be shown. The theme that brought Nan Goldin to the forefront of the art world in the 1980s was the personal quality of her work: she photographed her friends and her surroundings at their most raw and real.

Nan Goldin's 'Nan and Brian in bed'
Museum of Modern Art, 2016

In 1985, Goldin complied a slideshow of photographs taken from 1979 up until that point and together, these photographs, along with the soundtrack she put behind them, created a diary like experience and narrative, commenting on the nature of relationships between people, friends, lovers, family, etc. Included in this work were “subversive” images of underground gay culture in New York City, drug culture, and as well her own personal relationships. Goldin titled this work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and this is the work of hers that I would greatly consider a feminist work. Goldin herself speaks of the work being political in an interview, saying

“Especially The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is very much about gender politics, before there was such a word, before they taught it at the university. A friend of mine said I was born with a feminist heart. I decided at the age of five that there was nothing my brothers can do and I cannot do. I grew up that way. It was not like an act of decision that I was going to make a piece about gender politics. I made this slideshow about my life, about my past life. Later, I realized how political it was.”

The photographs in the film work to create a narrative. They are stringed together by themes, from motherhood to abuse to drugs to prostitution. In the same interview, Goldin specifically comments that she wanted to recognize that prostitution and marriage were direct opposites and the only two options for women according to the status quo, a concept reinforced by Jean Kilbourne’s analysis of advertisement portraying girls as either a slut or a prude.

Nan Goldin's 'Nan One Month After Being Battered' 
Museum of Modern Art, 2016

In Goldin’s portrayal of domestic abuse, specifically the abuse her own boyfriend had committed against her, Goldin proves her strength and power as a woman. Goldin’s interest as a photographer was to explore relationships between men and women, and being in a relationship that often turned violent, she had material to work with – and turning her pain into art, acts, in a very feminist manner, as taking back her power.

Goldin proves her feminism as well in her treatment of portraying queer culture – portraying drag queens as drag queens, instead of misgendering them and amplifying what many at the time considered to be “freakish.” She has commented on how she is lauded for this, saying “To me, the queens were not men. My work was much more respectful to them. I’ve never thought of a drag queen as a man. That’s really the last thing I think about when I look at them. They weren’t women either, by the way, they were another species” (The Guardian, 2014). She never considered her photographs to be portraying freaks, but more her own family and friends – having love and empathy for her friends and family involved in queer culture impacted her art. Drag queens weren’t men or women to Goldin, but they were still a “species” who deserved respect in the way they wanted to be portrayed in photographs. Her current day opinions about trans people as expressed in modern day interviews do not offer this same amount of respect, but Goldin’s work in the 1980s was revelatory for its time.

When people experience Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, the rawness and honesty the photographs display is what strikes most. Audre Lorde has written that silence will not protect you – Goldin’s work offers a loudness for many people. A brutal, rough, beautiful honesty about sex and intimacy.

Citations:

Lorde, Audre (1977). The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action

Kilborune, Jean. The More You Subtract, The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size

Mazur, Adam (Feb 13, 2003) If I want to take a picture, I take it no mater what. Foto Tapeta http://fototapeta.art.pl/2003/ngie.php

Allen, Polly (Nov 30, 2011). In the Frame: Nan Goldin, "One Month After Being Battered, BitchMedia https://www.bitchmedia.org/post/in-the-frame-nan-goldin-feminist-artist-domestic-violence

O'Hagan, Sean (Mar 22, 2014). Nan Goldin: 'I wanted to get high at a really early age', The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/23/nan-goldin-photographer-wanted-get-high-early-age

Johnson, Ken (July 14, 2016). Bleak Reality in Nan Goldin's 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency' The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/arts/design/bleak-reality-in-nan-goldins-the-ballad-of-sexual-dependency.html

Aperture Foundation on Nan Goldin: https://aperture.org/shop/nan-goldin-ballad/