Fine Art Photography
Series
Nan Goldin
Biography of Postmodernist Art Photographer.
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Fine Art Photography
Series
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Nan Goldin (b.1953)Contents • Nan Goldin's Photography |
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PHOTOGRAPHIC TERMS
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Specializing in portraits, Goldin's fine art photography highlights the lives of socially marginalized groups as well as a number of feminist issues. Regarded as one of the most active art photographers working mostly with images of the body, her postmodernist art is part of the general increase in photographic representations of deviance from cultural norms, which began during the 1980s. She also uses photography as a visual diary: her series The Ballard of Sexual Dependency (1979-2004), for instance, is a collection of 700 slides set to music which focuses on gender politics and depicts the lives and loves of a marginal community on New York's Lower East Side. Described as a passionate chronicler of love in an era of uncertain sexuality, glamour, violence, intoxication and death, Goldin captures very real moments of loneliness, admiration, self-revelation, as well as private instances of love and hate. Hers is a type of contemporary art which draws on snapshot aesthetics and gets 'up close and personal', although without the spontaneity of street photography.
Childhood in Washington DC. After her older sister's suicide, removed from parental care and given to foster parents. Schooling in Lincoln Massachusetts. First black-and-white photos and Polaroids of friends (including David Armstrong). Evening classes at the New England School of Photography under Henry Horenstein. Through him discovers the work of Larry Clark (b.1943), who specializes in the milieu of junkies (see his photobook Tulsa, 1971). 1974, workshop under the Viennese-born Lisette Model (1901-83). Begins studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (with diCorcia and Mark Morrisroe). 1973, takes up colour photography (including flash and wide-angle aesthetic). 1977, Goldin graduates from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University, after working mainly with Cibachrome prints. 1978, moves to New York. Begins documenting
the post-punk new-wave music scene, and feminist
art, along with the city's gay culture of the late 1970s/early 1980s,
notably the Bowery's hard-drug subculture. She is promoted by Marvin Heiferman
(Castelli Graphics). First group exhibitions especially slide shows (from
1980 with music). In 1981 comes The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
(named after a song in Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera) her most important
multimedia presentation to date (1985/86 much admired at contemporary
art festivals in Edinburgh and Berlin). In 2006, comes her New York installation, Chasing a Ghost: her first work to include moving pictures. Features Sisters, Saints, & Sybils, a video presentation of how she coped with her sister's suicide. Her most recent works reveal further changes in her lens-based art away from photography, towards film. Like Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89), however, Goldin appears to skirt the edge of good taste, due to the explicit nature of her work.
1977 Boston (Atlantic Gallery) (joint show
with David Armstrong)
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Other Famous 20th Century Photographers For early pioneers, see: 19th-Century Photographers. Also, in addition to those mentioned above, here is a short list of the best known camera artists of the 20th century. • Henri
Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) Street photos |
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• For more about Feminist photography,
see: Homepage.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHOTOGRAPHIC ART |
