Nan Goldin's work...

Jim Chinn said:

Nothing wrong with looking at all the rotten things in the world, but when it is done through a prism of self-absorbtion and self-conceit, it makes for mostly pretty forgetable art that has no real resonnance outside the narrow confines of NY gallery and liberal college elites.

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Liberal college elites? My god I think I qualify... and yes, I like her work for its content; technically you may find issue with it, but what it communicates is what I think she wants to emphasize.

Donald Miller said:

For those who view photographic art as only to be employed in depicting things of beauty, there is no doubt that Goldins work will not resonate.

For those who view photographic art as depicting some segment of the human condition or experience, then Goldins work does resonate because she is not a voyeuristic observer. It is through her immersion into the dynamics of what she portrays that she claims and obtains legitimacy for her imagery.

Photographic art if it is only relegated to the realm employed for the portrayal of what we deem to be beautiful will miss the boat by miles.

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For me, Nan Goldin's work is a gray area, but dark gray. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I remember when art had to have some beauty. But I'm OK with the idea that there are no rules. However, to me, if a photo is just "interesting", you call it just that. If you say her work depicts some segment of the human condition or experience —which I agree it does— then, it's documentary photography. Reportage.

But I think to say that she is not a "voyeuristic observer" is to forget that all photographers, amateur or professional, are precisely —and at least— that, if nothing else!

I will agree that her involvement in what she portrays adds legitimacy to her photography, but with that as a qualifier, my mother's pictures of me blowing out the candles on the birthday cake she baked for me should be in a museum.

I know that my sarcasm serves for nothing, because in the end, you are right; the nimrods like me who scratch our heads at the realities of the art market are doomed to never really profit from it. As the parade passes, we're going, "How do I get on one of those ugly floats?" But that's almost another subject.

But in all honesty, Don, it's not that I "view photographic art as only to be employed in depicting things of beauty", but rather, to depict things beautifully. Even horrible things.

There is a big difference between Arbus and Goldin's work. Arbus obviously brought all her own personal idiosyncracies and some would say pyschosis to her work, but she did not interject herself into the frame. We can question her motives and her own self-image, but at least the images all have a certain cool detachment that allows the viewer to look at them as individual subjects.

And Arbus was a very competent photographer who understood basic composition and foucs.

Goldin's work is really an open diary of her life, or so she says in this articlehttp://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa031802a.htm(more then you may ever want to know about Nan Goldin).

In the article I found it interesting that the images that make up the book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency were originally part of a multi-media/slide presentation for museums with the number of images close to 700. It also mentions that most museums now view the particular work as inconvienent and irrelevant today. So much for great art. I mean how many people really want to look at what amount to a bunch of vacation slides?

One other difference between Goldin and Arbus. I don't think you are going to see any great retrospectives or movies based on Goldin's work like you do for Arbus 25 years from now. Diane Arbus's work gets better and better with age> Goldin's work from 20 years ago just gets more and more stale.

Jim Chinn said:

There is a big difference between Arbus and Goldin's work. Arbus obviously brought all her own personal idiosyncracies and some would say pyschosis to her work, but she did not interject herself into the frame. We can question her motives and her own self-image, but at least the images all have a certain cool detachment that allows the viewer to look at them as individual subjects.

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I agree about the fact that Arbus does not appear in most of her photos, but her presence is an unmistakable fact of her pictures. She would stop people in the street, talk with them, and her pictures tend to project a part of who she was. That she does not appear visually on the frame is not so strong a feature of her detachment.

Jim Chinn said:

And Arbus was a very competent photographer who understood basic composition and foucs.

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I would also add that Diane Arbus was a much more mature artist than Nan Goldin did. If you look at the progression Goldin's work over time, it looks like a VH1 behind the scenes: first the halcyon days of free love drugs sex art, then the darker side of exploitation, the crisis, and now a renewed spirituality and engaging sense of life that is more innocent. Blech. The diary aspect of her picture is for me the least engaging part. I just don't give a damn about other people's live as lives. That said, there are still some Goldin picture that I like.

However, I think the comparison with Arbus in the end is not so way off. Goldin herself said that if it wasn't for Arbus, she would not have made the kind of pictures she does. There's a genealogical resemblance, not an imitative one. Without Arbus, no Goldin. I would also add: in terms of cutlural history, without Weegee, no Arbus; without Jacob Riis, no Weegee.

Jim Chinn said:

One other difference between Goldin and Arbus. I don't think you are going to see any great retrospectives or movies based on Goldin's work like you do for Arbus 25 years from now. Diane Arbus's work gets better and better with age> Goldin's work from 20 years ago just gets more and more stale.

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I can't bet on that; after all we have a hindsight on Diane Arbus we do not have on Nan Goldin.