Nan Goldin (1953- ): Rebellious U.S. Photographer

1. Nan Goldin (1953- ): Rebellious U.S. Photographer Nan was an upper middle class Jewish girl whose sister Barbara, 18, committed suicide under a train when Nan was 14. Extremely troubled by this event, Goldin decided that traditional family values and life were not for her. Many of Nan’s pictures document struggles in her own life - featuring drug use, squalor, and abusive relationships. “Slideshows are my most important medium; they are like films that can constantly be edited. They always grow, as I show them over a period of years.”

2. “Nan and Brian in bed”, NYC, 1983. (Cibachrome orig. 20”x24”) The cover of Nan Goldin’s book and slideshow “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”. We are drawn to share Nan’s own autobiographical unreciprocated gaze, feeling the couple’s emotional distance, even after implied intimacy. Mia Fineman of Artnet.com mentions: “a crepuscular orange glow that palpably captures the lugubrious mood of a dying relationship… her face an ambivalent mixture of affection, vulnerability and weariness”We can learn from “Goldin Eye” how to depict and convey powerful emotion in photography.

3. “Nan One Month After Being Battered”, Tate 1984 In contrast to the damage she defiantly offers to the camera, Nan wears dangly earrings and necklace, bright red lipstick to match her damaged eye and perfectly glossy hair. Flash is used to give a night-time blueish tone to the white curtain. She blends into the dark furniture background. “We were well suited emotionally and the relationship became very interdependent… neither of us could make the break. The desire was constantly re-inspired at the same time that the dissatisfaction became undeniable”. (Quote from “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”)

4. “Self Portrait writing in my diary”, Boston 1989 One of many examples showing how Nan Goldin uses available light to make photographs more like a painting - Interesting!

5. “Self Portrait On The Train”, Germany 1992 Nan Goldin sadly spent time in various psychiatric facilities – See for instance “Self-Portrait In Delirium”, The Priory, London, 2002. Here, the warm sharp focus of Nan Goldin’s face against the cool green mirrored blur is as usual, intentional and more than the snapshot it appears. Her pictures are the diary of her life.“I still perceive the outside world as an abstraction. When I look at a landscape, I see a postcard. I find it hard to connect to what I'm looking at …”

6. “Self-portrait with eyes turned inward”, Boston 1989 Nan Goldin’s intimate and edgy photographs and slideshows focus on diarising everything; from the urban scene in New York and Europe 1970-2000, to herself, relationships, children and fashion.Winner of many awards, such as the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography for 2007.

7. Ambivalence «  SELF PORTRAIT IN THE HOTEL DE LA BRETONNERIE, PARIS » Nan Goldin rebelled as a teenager. She soon revelled in drugs and made close friends of social outcasts like drag queens. “After years of experiencing and photographing the struggle of the two genders with their codes and definitions, and their difficulties in relating to each other, it was liberating to meet people who had crossed these gender boundaries.” Nan’s sister’s suicide made her determined to preserve the memory of her subjects so she would never again misplace the memory of them.

8. “Misty & Jimmy Paulette in the taxi”, NYC 1991 (Tate) “I was eighteen and felt like I was a queen too … they became my whole world. I wanted to pay homage, to show them how beautiful they were… a third gender that made more sense than either of the other two.”

9. “Joey In My Bed”, NYC, 1991 Provocative, uninhibited, ambiguous, controversial…“I believe one should create from what one knows and speak about one’s tribe. You can only speak with true understanding and empathy about what you’ve experienced…These are my friends, these are my family, this is myself. There is no separation between me and what I photograph.”- Nan Goldin

10. “Io in camouflage”, NYC, 1994 Io Tillett Wright “was born a girl but chose to grow up as a boy”(here aged 15). She founded America's first nationally distributed street art magazine, Overspray.Nan Goldin is Io’s godmother.“Most people get scared when they can’t categorize others—by race, by age, and most of all by gender. It takes nerve to walk down the street when you fall between the cracks. Some of my friends shift genders daily from boy to girl and back again.”

11. “Gotscho Kissing Gilles”, Paris 1993 Typical of the raw, gritty and uncomfortable emotion of Nan Goldin’s work, here HIV/AIDS makes prisoners of the subjects’ dependence on sex and illicit drugs. Nan felt her photography kept such people alive. The best of people is revealed in ordinary gestures and connections to the ones they love.(A similar distressing photo “Gilles’ Arm” shows how emaciated he is – somewhat reminiscent of prisoners at Auschwitz.)

12. Mirrors “Nan Goldin In The Mirror at Albertos”, 2013Nan often uses mirrors (maybe we should try!) and we shall see more of this now. “I'll Be Your Mirror”, “The Other Side” and “All By Myself” were all book titles of hers, and major themes in her work.

13. “Edwidge Behind The Bar At Elwynes”, NYC 1985 The photo and mirror depict both a truth, and a sympathetic distortion of it. This was reality as Nan Goldin saw it, here showing ambiguous gender in a straightforward way. She and her camera flash were part of her subjects’ everyday lives.

14. “Self Portrait In The Blue Bathroom”, London 1980 Again, this photographer’s keen eye for light and skilled use of it on film!The blue tub, tiles, walls, rail and shampoo bottles create a muted space from which Goldin’s face, milky white skin and red hair boldly stand out. Her ghostly portrait is surrounded by blackness rather than blue that logically should be reflected there. From somewhere outside the frame, a bright light also paints the wall below the mirror, illuminating and then dissipating, like an apparition merging Goldin and the room she inhabits.

15. Rodarte Fashion Collection, Grey Magazine 2010 Note the identically dressed dark-haired woman in the same room reflected in the mirror… whose reflection is also looking at the same blonde model… who however is turning away, as if after a row… I cannot speculate on the meaning of this but you may wish to!

16. “Sean O'Pry & Anya Kazakova” (2010 BottegaVeneta advert) Here the woman seems to have all the power, not the man as in “Nan and Brian In Bed” – but there is still that Emotional Distance. The couple seem to me to feel both the beauty and horror of everyday life. See also “Wolf Whistle - Erin Wasson for Scanlan and Theodore Lookbook”, 2010

17. Children and Responsible Adults… Home Alone? Post It note reads: “No Peple is hear. Please wayt”.“That little one peeping through the hole reminds me so much of myself, hiding but wanting to see… I'm interested in the melancholy I see, and the way children retreat into their own world… Children haven't been socially conditioned yet, so they can scream and express how they feel publicly.”

18. “Skinhead With Child”, 1978 The skinhead is lit up a lot more then the child is. This emphasises the physical separation in the image, which works well because they are clearly two very different people. “It's about hoping that my friends will bring up a new species of people”

19. From book “Eden and After”, Phaidon, 2014 “I let the children just be themselves, and try to find out who they are, then go as far as I can with that. I'm interested in how little children identify themselves by gender. I think for them it's fluid.”- Nan Goldin

20. From book “Eden and After”, Phaidon, 2014 Emotional closeness or distance? Love? Security? Paedophilia? Maybe... “I'm very interested in their relationships to their parents – whether it is obvious that they are close, or ambivalent.”

21. “Isabella & Guido’s game, The Statue”, Sardinia 2003 I don’t want to imply that all Nan Goldin’s photographs are bleak in tone! Guido Costa from Turin hosts exhibitions and writes on photography and art: Isabella his daughter, here shares the fun.

22. Arty Portraits “Cookie (Mueller) at Tin Pan Alley”, NYC, 1983 Photography, Art or both?

23. “Car With Smoke”, New Hampshire, USA 1979 It’s how to use that ‘natural’ lighting again… A subtle fill-in flash was used. “Her eye is acutely attuned to the intricate negotiations between people and their surroundings” - (Mia Fineman, Artnet.com)

24. “Suzanne Crying”, NYC 1985 Nan Goldin is deeply enmeshed with her subjects, and confronts them with candour and empathy. Unlike traditional documentary photographers, she is not an outsider looking in, so her photographs never have a distant feel. “Photography is a tool of salvation from a difficult personal biography… an expression of the all-encompassing identification between art and life.”

25. “Kiki Smith”, The New York Times Magazine, 2006 Feminist artist friend. Engaging photo - intimate, yet cool, urban, stark and dark…

26. “Robert Pattinson for Dior, in a harsh light”, 2013 Nan Goldin is considered one of the most significant photographers of our time, but said in 2011: “I've never considered photography one of the higher art forms. Everyone takes photos; now even phones can. The whole issue of digital is so depressing to me; my process is gone…”(Sarah Phillips, The Guardian)

27. “The Light In My Bedroom, 13th Street, NYC”, 2014 Goldin was presented with the Lucie Award in 2014 for Outstanding Achievement in Portraiture

28. TheEnd “Nan Goldin at my studio” by ‘Fotologer’, 2008 Nan’s Top Photography Tip:“Don't do it. There are way too many photographers. Try to draw, or get politically involved in something that matters. And unless you need to make art to stay alive, you shouldn't be making art.” (to Sarah Phillips, The Guardian, 24/07/2011)