Nan Goldin

I thought i should look more into the work of nan goldin. After reading what she wrote in the book. I thought it would be good to reserch more of her work.  Her work often looks into the groups on the outskirt of society. Alot of her work focuses on drug addicts, violent relationships, as well as auto-biographical photographs documenting her surroundings and her self portraits focusing on pinical moments. . The main themes of her early pictures are love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality; these frames are usually shot with natural and avalible lighting. She has documented women looking in mirrors, girls in bathrooms, drag queens, sexual acts, and the culture of obsession and dependency. The images are viewed like a private journal made public. This relates back to my idea at looking at diary entrys. I like the idea of almost contrasting the symbolism im planning for my video work by using almost like a documentry approach to the photos. it is something that i can experiment with.

Examples of her work:

While her self portraits are not as 'gritty' as her other photographs, which sometimes have a far more obscene subjects. It is the link between her self-destruction and portraits of herself. Mirrors play a big part in her self portraits, or reflections in general as she uses windows to sometimes. It makes me think back to what one of the other entrys in the book, mentioned it to be painful to look in the mirror at there own reflection, maybe that is a way in which she shows her pain. Using avalible lighting makes it appear more natural and there are no overly garish colours. She often is just wearing black, or underwear, almost as if to detach her indenity, all we have is her face and surroundings.