One of the contrasts in contemporary art photography is cost of production. On the one hand there is a lot of big bucks, high value production image making - involving complex use of locations, props, lights, actors, a large format camera, followed by professional post-production work and subsequent huge, smartly framed prints - while on the other just having a camera seems to be enough.
Nan Goldin is an easy fit into the latter way of working, she's been intimately documenting people's lives, including her own, since she was 15. Gay and transexual communities were the subject of her first solo show five years later, and she has maintained an affinity for them ever since. While candid the empathy evident in her pictures is absent in the trans/gay images made by the late Diane Arbus in the 60s and 70s and, in the last few years, by Katy Grannan. In terms of image drama I prefer the photos of those ruthless bitches Arbus and Grannan, but in terms of people it's Nan Goldin who'd I like to hang out with : ) and I'm delighted to see that last year she was awarded the McDowell prize, only the fourth photographer to receive it in over fifty years.
Talking of contrasts, here are two of her self-portraits, both with the same title Self portrait in my room. The first one is from 1983. I think I understand her need to take it - wanting affirmation from the camera about an aspect of who you want to be - while aware that truth is a rubber band and the simple, lightly constructed photograph can only bend the way you want by so much. Perhaps she could have made more effort - by wearing matching bra and pants for a start maybe?. But while the pose is self-eroticising the lengths she is prepared to go to satisfy the fetishistic gaze - which she is acknowledging - is intuitively well judged, it is her world and asserts itself as a valid self-portrait. Her concession to tidying the bed at least was more than enough. The second self-portrait, made over a decade later in Berlin, is also on a bed but now addresses entirely different aspirations.
Nan Goldin is an easy fit into the latter way of working, she's been intimately documenting people's lives, including her own, since she was 15. Gay and transexual communities were the subject of her first solo show five years later, and she has maintained an affinity for them ever since. While candid the empathy evident in her pictures is absent in the trans/gay images made by the late Diane Arbus in the 60s and 70s and, in the last few years, by Katy Grannan. In terms of image drama I prefer the photos of those ruthless bitches Arbus and Grannan, but in terms of people it's Nan Goldin who'd I like to hang out with : ) and I'm delighted to see that last year she was awarded the McDowell prize, only the fourth photographer to receive it in over fifty years.
Talking of contrasts, here are two of her self-portraits, both with the same title Self portrait in my room. The first one is from 1983. I think I understand her need to take it - wanting affirmation from the camera about an aspect of who you want to be - while aware that truth is a rubber band and the simple, lightly constructed photograph can only bend the way you want by so much. Perhaps she could have made more effort - by wearing matching bra and pants for a start maybe?. But while the pose is self-eroticising the lengths she is prepared to go to satisfy the fetishistic gaze - which she is acknowledging - is intuitively well judged, it is her world and asserts itself as a valid self-portrait. Her concession to tidying the bed at least was more than enough. The second self-portrait, made over a decade later in Berlin, is also on a bed but now addresses entirely different aspirations.
