Previous blog post, included a small piece about her 'The Hug' portrait.
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1725489160125905015#editor/target=post;postID=5326458816258421618
Information collated by googling 'Nan Goldin Self-portrait'
- in my mind the photograph 'one month after being battered' is prominent
Self portrait on the train, germany 1992
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/goldin-self-portrait-on-the-train-germany-p78047
" Goldin's harrowing self-portrait Nan one month after being battered 1984 (Tate P78045)
marked the end of a long-term relationship with her lover, Brian. After
this she slid into depression accompanied by increasing bouts of
hard-drug abuse. She entered a clinic in Boston in 1988 and recalls: 'I
didn't have any knowledge of light, consciously - none - until I went to
the hospital in 1988. I lived in the dark, I lived by night. I had no
idea that light changed in the course of a day. I didn't spend enough
time outside to know that.' (Quoted in I'll Be Your Mirror,
p.449.) Almost all her photographs of the period 1978 to 1988 were
taken indoors, at night, using a flashbulb. In the clinic she began to
photograph herself in natural light, the change in colour tones and
atmosphere reflecting the change in her visualisation of herself, and
her world, without the intense hyper-reality of intoxication.
Afterwards, learning how to live without drugs and alcohol, she said
that she used 'the camera to fit back into my own skin, to relearn first
my face and then the outside world' (quoted in A Double Life, p.11). This new-found mood of tranquillity is reflected in Goldin's pose of contemplation in this 1992 Self Portrait.
She has explained: 'What I'm interested in is capturing life as it's
being lived, and the flavour and the smell of it, and maintaining that
in the pictures … it really is … about wanting to see the truth, and
accepting it, rather than about trying to make my version of it.'
(Quoted in Nan Goldin: I'll be your Mirror, p.452.) "
Nan Goldin, One month after being battered 1984
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/goldin-nan-one-month-after-being-battered-p78045
"The dark shadows behind her head indicate the use of a flash
bulb. As a photographic print, this image exists in an edition of
twenty-five. It marks the end of a long-term relationship and a
particular period in the artist's life and provides the emotional climax
of Goldin's slide show and book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. It also appears in Goldin's more recent slide show series of self-portraits titled All By Myself 1995-6. She has explained the situation leading up to this image: "
"For a number of years I was deeply involved with a man. We were well suited
emotionally and the relationship became very interdependent. Jealousy was used to
inspire passion. His concept of relationships was rooted in … romantic idealism … I craved the dependency, the adoration, the satisfaction, the security, but sometimes I felt claustrophobic. We were addicted to the amount of love the relationship supplied ... Things between us started to break down, but neither of us could make the break. The desire was constantly reinspired at the same time that the dissatisfaction became undeniable. Our sexual obsession remained one of the hooks. One night, he battered me severely, almost blinding me. (Quoted in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, p.8.) "
She has said 'I want to show exactly what my world looks like, without glamorisation, without glorification. This is not a bleak world but one in which there is an awareness of pain, a quality of introspection' (quoted in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, p.6)
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Nan Goldin
A Double Life
David Armstrong
1994
ISBN - 1-881616-21-5
The foreward is split into two parts, first half is by David, second half by Nan
Lots of drug use, great friendship, Nan worshipped the queens
"but more often it seems we're just an old married couple now who never have sex, at least not with each other." p8 on his relationship to nan
David was the first person Nan ever photographed p9
He named her Nan and showed her her personality
"I became the person I wanted to be when I was with David"
"Before I met David I had looked inside myself and found emptiness but he looked inside me and found pearls."
"After being brutally beaten up by my boyfriend in 1984 my relationshipwith drugs crossed the line from use to abuse. By 1986 I was in my full-blown addiction." p10
Had burned bridges, HIV entered their world by 1981, several friends had died
"I started by taking self-portraits ) using the camera to fit back into my own skin, to relearn first my face and then the outside world." p11
(Nan Goldin 1993, Berlin)
Lovely pictures, very interesting varied, most seem to be nan's pictures or david's pictures, very few self-portraits, but you get a good idea of the world and life being led here.
Ended with the self-portrait on the train which is interesting
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nan Goldin
I'll be your mirror
edited by Nan goldin david armstrong, hans werner holzwarth
Whitney museum of american art
ISBN 3-931141-33-0
Contents
-Directors Foreward, David A. Ross p15
-In/of her time: Nan Goldin's Photographs, Elisabeth Sussman p25
-All yesterday's Parties, Luc Sante p97
-Case #7: Dora, Cookie Mueller p129
-"My Number one medium All my life: Goldin talking w/ J. Hoberman p135
-Nan's Manhattan, Darryl Pinckney p203
-A Last letter, Cookie Mueller p274
-Pictures of life and loss, Marvin Heiferman p277
-Deep pictures of us all, Joachim Sartorius p319
- For Andrew Wood, James Fenton p367
-Postcards from America: X-rays from hell, David Wojnarowicz p374
-On acceptance: A conversation, Goldin talking w/ Armstrong + Keller p447
Directors Foreward - David A. Ross p15
Goldin feels strongly about Lou Reed's poetry, velvet's music + the song "I'll be your mirror"
"She shares her life with us, shares her need for a release, and her expectations of the sublime. And as we observe all this in sumptuous detail, we are rendered mute."
In/of her time: Nan Goldin's Photographs, Elisabeth Sussman p25
"As single images, Goldin's work can be seen as "social portraiture."
"Goldin's world was on of self-definition in a constructed , self-created space, recorded by constant picture taking." p27
"As if sensing that the camera would reveal a new identity, independent of conventional society and relating to a world constructed of each other and of a fantastic symbiosis with glamour, Goldin's friends became enamored of picture taking and posing." p28
"Goldin now began to use a Pentax camera. In her earlier work, she had had to shoot in available light." p30 "...Most significantly, by 1973, she was beginning to shoot in color." p30
"Even when photographing in natural light, she often unconsciously replicated the effect of artificisal lighting. In many of her works, radiant natural light, such as sunset, takes on the unnatural effulgence of a stage backdrop." p31
Slideshows, were cheap and allowed a narrative to be shown, Goldin's preferred method p32
The Ballad of sexual dependency, slides always change each time it is shown p33
description of the ballad, mirror meaning of reflection, confirmation
"The emotional climax of the narrative is the photograph Nan one month after being battered (1984, pp. 198-99). a self-portrait showing Goldin's disfigured face, her eye smashed and bloodshot, staring into the viewing lens, after being beaten up by her longtime boyfriend. This event signaled the end of a relationship and of a period in the artist's life." p36
SELF-PORTRAIT, BRIEF DESCRIPTION
Slideshow 'All by myself' series of self-portraits, series documenting her own downside and subsequent recovery.. presents herself in pain and despair. p37
"Goldin's extended portraits of herself, CookieMueller, and Siobhan reveal the editing process that she has used since 1991 to organise the narrative structure of her work." p40
how a photograph is presented, curated changes how it is percieve and interpreted
"Goldin takes these pictures (of individuals) one by one, without predetermining their meanings, but then assembles them in what she calls an extended portraits ... they more accurately approach the way memory works."
All yesterday's Parties, Luc Sante p97
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Case #7: Dora, Cookie Mueller p129
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"My Number one medium All my life" NanGoldin talking with J. Hoberman p135
movie watching - shared experience
more related to film, and how ballad was like film, etc
190-191 - self portrait? ex lover on the bed, smoking cigarette
196-197 bruised eyes self portrsit?
198-199 self portrait one month after being battered
Nan's Manhattan, Darryl Pinckney p203
234-235 self portrait, sat on a bed
not a particulary relevant chapter
Pictures of life and loss, Marvin Heiferman p277
Casta Diva song to the Ballad
"The aria that Callas sings sings - "Casta Diva" from Bellini's opera Norma - implores the goddess of the moon to use the power and the beauty of light to reveal truth, to soothe pain to strengthen character, to illuminate a path to peace. Nan Goldin has asked nothing less of the medium of photography. For more than twenty years, she has upheld her belief in the power and beauty of photography and her commitment to photographic truth." p277
"Soon pictures were being taken, not to trigger memory, but to become memory itself. They were the only way to remember what had happened the night before." p278
Deep pictures of us all, Joachim Sartorius p319
"Nan replied, "I don't choose people in order to photograph them; I take photos straight from my life. These photos come straight from relationships, not from observation." Nan Goldin photographs what she knows. Her work has the compelling conviction of authenticity" p321 ...
"She questions our identity. She questions the human condition and the way we live, as individuals, now." p323
seeing of seeing
"Helmut Newton praised Goldin's self-portraits above all. And rightly so. Rarely do we find in contemporary photography such boundless self-effacement. The self-portraits lay bare her integrity and absolute honesty even more explicitly than her other works." p324
On acceptance: A conversation, Goldin talking w/ Armstrong + Keller p447
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Need to look at next: Ballad + All by myself
Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
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