Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin has a very sad background, her sister killed herself naturally provoking a lot of anger made worse by the predictions that Goldin would later do the same. She decided to go to ‘Free school’ at the age of 14 and then onto art college in Boston later. The eye catching thing about Goldins images is that they show everyday life, they are a part of herself and her new family around her and document trials she had been through. Her images are sometimes constructed showing links to films or the culture at the time they were taken. Some even look as though they reference paintings although she doesn’t link them directly. Her images show a time of exploring a sexuality which is fixed as a child, drugs culture, drag queens and relationships she had.

Within her work she created identity, wouldn’t sequence her work and include a lot of nude images sometimes using water which would symbolise cleansing. At the time it wasn’t normal for people to have a camera everyday so it was almost like she was creating celebrities of her friends. She would show her relationships especially one with a man named Brian which was very sexual and emotional and he often beat her, which is shown by some of her images. She was later rehabilitated and came off the drugs with which time her images took a complete turn, from being taken in the day they were then done in the light symbolising her new life and often water again to show cleansing.

I like the pictures of the drag queens. These were often taken at night because at this time they were scared to be out during the day. At this stage of her life, Nan Goldin was pretty much nocturnal. She shot images of them because of how different from straight men because of their flexibility. Her images are casual and appear to be snap shots at the time, almost like our snap shots in the family albums. The image I’ve chosen shows two men in a taxi in drag but their expression and pose is very natural leading me to conclude she has just got her camera out and snapped freezing them in time. She did lose a lot of her friends due to HIV and these images are obviously a way for her to remember them. I think her work documents her strange and interesting life letting us in to a completely different world and shows us how everyone’s family life is individual.

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=2649&page=1

http://www.artnet.com/artists/nan-goldin/