Nan Goldin is an artist who i have particularly warmed to.
From a middle class Jewish family with parents whose ideas were moderately liberal and progressive. Her first show was based on her photographic journeys among her city's gay and transsexual communities. She began documenting the post-punk new-wave music scene, along with the city's vibrant, post-Stonewall gay subculture of the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was drawn especially to the Bowery's hard-drug subculture.
These snapshot aesthetic images depict drug use, violent, aggressive couples and autobiographical moments. Most of her Ballad subjects were dead by the 1990s, lost either to drug overdose or AIDS; this tally included close friends and often-photographed subjects.
Goldin's work is most often presented in the form of a slideshow, and has been shown at film festivals; her most famous being a 45 minute show in which 800 pictures are displayed. I like how this photography is displayed being continuos and narrative.
Critics have said she glamorises heriowin use, yet i find their suggestions hard to believe seeing as her subjects within her works showing drug use from back then are now dead.
Strong messages are shown in her work which i love, and the rawness and realistic feelings seen visually in her work make it all that much more interesting. I feel as though i would like to document my friends and people and places close to me in such a way, showing messages through shorter more specific snippets of time, showing a time lapse in a way that i ultimately perceive them, as i have the power to construct the final images in the way i want to. YET i will do this fairly and honestly. I would then maybe like to construct images of how i feel they may perceive me. The project is on going..
Below, a few examples from Goldin's earlier work, inspiration to me.
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