Storytelling & Controversial Art of Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin, an American photographer, contributed immensely to contemporary photography by being honest, fearless and completely intimate with very difficult, complex & controversial photography & social subjects. Her work is very inspiring, especially when it comes to documenting subcultures, endemics and complex, powerful sensual relationships.

Mam Goldin has extensive photography documentary in gay, lesbian & LGBT subcultures & actively went on with horrifying images of suffering, atrophy & death from HIV & opioid use. Her images don’t just appeal to me as a statement – when put together, I do not feel the need for words to describe my feelings towards the subjects.

Nudity in contemporary photography is often a choice but for Nan Goldin it was the substrate, especially when she had no intention to shy away or hesitate from depicting moments that are so true in almost everyone’s life, everyday. Whether it’s a stormy relationship between a man & a woman in a marriage or a LGBT relationship, Nan has told the story of love, passion, hurt & despair all through her photographic art.

As for her style, Nan said ‘I didn’t care about “good” photography, I cared about complete honesty.’

“Trixie on the Cot, New York City,” 1979 part of one of the most controversial documenting the decade’s New York scene and accompanying drug use without apology or any attempt to glamorize her subjects. The series was so scorned by some, even President Bill Clinton accused the photographer of inventing ‘heroin chic’. that only around mid 2000 did galleries started displaying them.

In 2016, MoMA displayed over 700 of Nan Goldin’s pictures in the exhibition The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.

“The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” is the diary I let people read. The diary is my form of control over my life. It allows me to obsessively record every detail. It enables me to remember.

“Nan One Month After Being Battered,” is a self portrait after a brutal incident in 1984 & printed on silver dye bleach in 2008 is displayed in The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Nan Goldin photographed her intimate sexual encounters as well, even some of her tormentous episodes of domestic violences in her relationships as well as some of her friends & families.

Much later, in a 2014 interview she said: “I can’t be held responsible for all that has happened since,” she says when I bring this up, her eyes flashing and her enervated east-coast drawl undercut with just a hint of anger. “Most of that stuff is so easy and lacking in any kind of emotional depth or context. Nowadays, people forget how radical my work was when it first appeared. Nobody else was doing what I did.”

I had listened to an interview of Richard Avedon when he went into the hospital his father was being treated during his last days & he took his images – a series of stark, morbid images of a sickly old man facing his death being photographed by his son almost as a show of revenge (like he described his feelings). However, in Nan Goldin’s stories, the feelings could be different.

Nan’s stories of people & families affected by & suffering from deadly diseases like the HIV or deadly uses of opioid, takes you through their lives, almost painfully often minute by minute, through situations that are quite ecstatic in a normal situation, making the pictures evoke pain in your heart. You come out sympathetic, more compassionate rather than feel the anger of the photographer at the killer diseases.