Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency
Nan and Brian in bed, NYC, 1983
Finally getting around to writing about some of the things I saw at the Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera exhibit at the SFMOMA. I learned about the exhibit when it was at the Tate Modern. I read all the info available on the Tate Modern website, and in fact was inspired to learn more about a few of the photographers. I wrote a couple of things inspired by photography in the show long before I knew I’d have a chance to see the show. You can read my various blog posts on the subject via my "exposed" tag. Then Stephane sent me the catalog from the exhibit which is really fantastic. It has a great collection of plates and essays on all the different sections of the exhibit (e.g. “Voyeurism and Desire” and “Surveillance”). Every single essay and collection of photos is provocative. Not only do they present some really great photography, but they also are loaded with so many things to think about in relation to photography and propriety. When I learned the exhibit was going to be at the SFMOMA while I was visiting the Bay Area, I was thrilled. I went to the exhibit twice and filled a notebook with notes that I’ve been sitting on since March.
Cookie in Tin Pan Alley, New York City, 1983
The very first thing I walked into at the museum was Nan Goldin’s 45 minute slideshow of her Ballad Of Sexual Dependency photos. I cannot begin to tell you how happy I was for the opportunity to see this show. I discovered Nan Goldin in 1981 at the Frankel Gallery when I was nineteen years old. I don’t know what compelled me to take such an interest in art when I was a kid without a high school education and fresh off the streets. On some unconscious level, maybe I was searching for ways to put my experiences into art or transcend my experiences through art. In any case, I stumbled onto Nan Goldin’s collection in its very early days, and I was utterly floored by it. It stuck with me and struck a chord like nothing I’d experienced in a long time, especially since I saw the show spitting distance from the very streets I walked as a teenager. Her photographs of sexual outsiders, junkies, musicians, lovers and drunks sang a familiar song for me. I thought that this was a world I knew -- a world of sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, and human vulnerability --, and Goldin’s portrayal of it was beautiful, unflinching, and real. At age nineteen, I had spent my entire life around alcohol, violence, and sex. Add that with the fact that I spent my teen years on the streets as a junkie and sex worker and identifying with the early punk scene at the Mabuhay Gardens, and I thought that I found a familiar place in Nan Goldin’s world. In her photography, I found a kind of mirror of my interior life and all the messed up history I held inside myself as I tried to navigate my way into the “straight” world after spending my entire teen years on the streets.
Sharon with Cookie on the Bed, Provincetown, MA, 1989
Of course, later on I would learn that Nan Goldin’s world wasn’t exactly my world, that as much as her work was grounded in alcohol, violence, drugs, sex and death of sexual outsider urban life, Nan Goldin occupied a position of privilege in “the scene” that allowed her to photograph the people in her life (including herself) and promote her work to get early recognition in galleries and museums. The only “scene” I was a part of was the scene of my own survival, and I never had or would have the privilege that allowed Nan Goldin to do what she was doing. But I don’t care. I’m not here to critique her position of privilege. It doesn’t mean that her photography doesn’t hold value for me. I’m just glad her photos were hanging in that gallery when I stumbled into it nearly three decades ago. I’m glad that Goldin continued the project for nearly two decades and that she assembled the body of work into the slideshow that I saw in San Francisco last March. Whenever I go back to the Bay Area, it’s an intense experience of self-reflection. Seeing Goldin’s slideshow at the SFMOMA this last March allowed me not only to see art the I have admired for many years in a new light (literally as projected transparencies), but it also allowed me to further ground myself inside my own personal history of the city and of the subjects in Goldin’s photography.
Kim in rhinestones, Paris, 1991
Accompanied by a music soundtrack and organized into themes (junkies, cross-dressers, drunks, sex, etc.), the slides are presented in monumental size. I don’t know the actual dimensions, but my guess is that they are about ten feet high. Seeing the photos projected in such large scale in all their gorgeously saturated color, the subjects captured with such intimate vulnerability and beauty, I was stunned. I sat down and gobbled up each image. Bars, trashed apartments, bathrooms, beds and gyms - all of the settings provide a stage as Goldin’s subjects flicker across the wall to the soundtrack. They stare out of the wall in naked human honesty. I was with my friend Sami for my first viewing and Duccio for the second, and I kept exclaiming how beautiful and moving the photos were. I was overwhelmed by them. I couldn’t stop watching. Sami and I have quite a bit of shared history - from needles, to sex work, to survival --, and both of us were moved nearly to tears by our sense of identification with the stunning and bare beauty of Goldin’s slideshow, by our own personal identification and the banks of memory and loss that we carry inside ourselves as survivors.
Joey at the love ball, NYC, 1992
After seeing the images projected in such monumental beauty, I thought I really want to know more about Goldin’s process. How does she make the photos look so rich and radiant? How does she accomplish such brilliant color saturation? What kind of film is she using? Transparency film? If so that would make sense about the color and glowing quality. The only thing I know is that she shoots with available light which is why there is no flash to distract from the rich color that bleeds through each photograph. It’s like through color and process, she infuses her subjects with a rich radiant glow that makes them almost angelic in their presentation. En masse the Ballad of Sexual Dependency presents like a kind of elegy for punk queer art angels that in their “otherness” seem to be stand-ins for the potential of human beauty not ugliness. (Note to self: Find out more about Goldin’s process.)
This brings me to the comparison that many have made between Nan Goldin and Diane Arbus. Certainly I can see the comparison in relation to subjects. Arbus photographs “freaks” in their domestic environment, and Goldin also photographs “freaks’ in their environment; however, for me, their work is starkly different in what it delivers. Arbus’s freaks are put on display and encased in Arbus’s cool formal style. There is no sympathy or vulnerability. They are presented like specimens for us to gawk at as they gawk back, the pristine black and white formal composition of her photos functioning almost like display cases for a lab presentation. Her subjects stare out of the frame as they are bound by the frame like animals on exhibit. On the other hand, Goldin’s figures explode out of the frame in super saturated color and vitality. They are open and vulnerable. They ask us to recognize their beauty and humanity.
Diane Arbus photography:
Certainly, this difference is a result of style and process. But both photographers make choices to determine the outcome of their work. Arbus’s work is formal, almost clinical in its composed formality. Goldin’s work has a spontaneous feel, like she’s capturing the human spirit emanating through the lights of clubs, apartments, hotel rooms, and streets. They’re like snapshots of the human spirit. Arbus’s are like formal studies in specimens, posed and in pristine form. But both bodies of work were executed with intent to achieve a certain emotional response from the viewer. Goldin’s offer identification, and in their naked vulnerability, they ask us not to cast judgment but to recognize beauty. Arbus’s work also asks us to recognize beauty, but its beauty that comes from the formal compositions of her human subjects. She takes the “botched” beauty of midgets, giants, twins, transsexuals and others and contains them within a structured formality. But it’s important to remember, that despite the difference in the underlying “emotional” content of Goldin and Arbus’s work, both photographers are artists making distinct choices to deliver a certain impact.
Many critics accuse Goldin’s work as being “easy.” Maybe it is easy, snapping photos while living amongst the underground art scene. But just because something is easy, that does not mean that it’s not valid. Goldin’s work holds an important place in documenting a certain side of culture and history that barely exists anymore. Her depiction of the queer scene is a historical document that most likely could not be recreated today in the 21s century, post-AIDS epidemic and post-Bush 1 and 2 presidencies. That time is over. Queer culture has simultaneously assimilated the guise of mainstream America while also being contained and rejected by mainstream culture. The tension between acceptance and rejection within queer culture and the fact that so many transgressive queers were wiped off the planet with AIDS makes Goldin’s work a kind of historical artifact. She started the project in 1979 right before the initial AIDS outbreak, and the “scene” she depicts is largely extinct.
Misty and Joey at Hornstrasse, Berlin, 1992
For me and my friend Sami, looking at her slideshow was an intensely emotional experience since we both survived the culture depicted. I was literally living on the streets in 1979, and the world of sex, drugs, violence and queer punk culture in Goldin’s photography was the world inside the bathroom at the Mabuhay Gardens where I lost myself to the droning sounds of early punk throbbing from the stage outside. The photos of junkies shooting up was the world of my body as I walked the streets to get my next fix. I was a toxic cocktail in the late 70s and early 80s just like Goldin’s cast of characters. Sami also survived heroin, sex work, and being queer, and he lived to tell the story. We both sat in front of the slides and were transfixed by the images that played before us. We recognized the beauty in Goldin’s work while also reflecting on our own personal relationship to the subjects. Seeing the slideshow in San Francisco, just city blocks away from the very streets I walked as a teenager and the residential hotels where I shot dope with the community of junkies, provided me with another kind of “coming home” and closure in my life. It allowed me to remember that surviving what I survived didn’t mark me as a “loser” but rather a survivor who was able to take those experiences and formulate them into art and writing.
Joana with Valerie and Reine in the Mirror, L’Hotel. Paris, 1999
If I had not seen Goldin’s photos at the SFMOMA, I wouldn’t have remembered that 19 year old girl fresh off the streets who for some reason took an interest in art. I still haven’t figured out what it was that made me go fresh from the streets to visiting galleries and museums and making art and writing (constantly). Maybe visiting galleries was one of my early steps to reclaim the streets, and taking up art and writing was an unconscious way for me to process my experiences. Certainly seeing Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency in 1981 was a big influence on what I would be doing with my writing and art on some level. It gave me a window to see how I could put my own experiences into some kind of creative form. Seeing the slideshow this past March reminded me again that it’s okay to show that beautiful things can come from ugly experiences. I have to remember that and not entirely kill off the history inside me and make it extinct.