Nan Goldin and The Intimate Portraits of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
By Mia Hart
*Trigger warning – content contains written and photographic documentation of domestic abuse*
Nan Goldin is perhaps one of the most unapologetically raw and authentic photographers of the twenty-first century. Influenced by the likes of Larry Clark, known for his controversial depictions of teen sub-cultures and ‘outlaw life’, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is one of the earliest diaristic modes of photography, with Goldin coining it her ‘visual diary’. It is a visceral portrayal of her peripheral community in 1980s downtown Manhattan, encompassing the likes of artists, addicts, and transvestites. Her camera captures the gritty realism of human experience through its approach to addiction, partying, sex, LGBTQ+ culture, and the AIDS crisis, which scythed her generation. Yet, its most palpable thread is Goldin’s concern with the fluctuating potency of human relationships, both platonic and amorous, through its spontaneous capture of the electric saturations of love, loss, and despair. Bruises, blood, and brutality converge with elation and friendships in the twilight scape that Goldin explores. Blurring the boundaries between observer and participant, her work proposed novel horizons for the nature of documentary photography and what it could represent.
Born in Washington D.C in 1953 to a middle-class Jewish family, Nan’s early life was troubled. Unable to conform to the expectations of suburbia, her sister Barbara committed suicide when Goldin was eleven years old. This trauma certainly influenced her penchant for photographing non-conformity within the demi-monde world. After leaving home and being thrown out of a string of schools and foster homes, Goldin moved to New York in the 1970s, where she immersed herself within its post-punk, new wave scene, photographing nights of debauchery, intimacy, and anarchism. She resonated with her friends in their shared belief to ‘to live fully and for the moment’, and they became her photographic subject matter.
Nan Goldin, Suzanne with Mona Lisa, Mexico City, 1981
Compiled of over 700 photos from the 1970s to the 1980s, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency offers a visual articulation, a ‘visual diary’, of Nan's close community, excavating the gritty vulnerabilities of their lives. It began as a slideshow of photographs she showed to her friends within underground bars and nightclubs, narrated by music from artists such as The Velvet Underground to Dean Martin. It was shown at the Whitney Biennale in 1985 and published as a book the following year. The slideshow also appeared at film festivals such as Edinburgh in 1985 and Berlin in 1986, where it garnered more widespread attention.
Nan Goldin, Suzanne in Yellow Hotel Room, 1981
When watching the slideshow or flicking through the photo book, there is a palpable sense of sweaty intimacy with the subject matter. The photographs, captured within personal spaces such as after-parties, bedrooms and bathroom mirrors provide an unflinching glimpse into the lives of her subjects, many of whom were overlooked by society and not considered appropriate to photograph. Whether slumped on crumpled bedsheets, submerged in murky bathwaters, drinking in seedy clubs, or engaged in acts of copulating, Nan leaves nothing unexcavated. We experience the idiosyncrasies of lives during their most individual, spontaneous moments through recurrent protagonists who become familiar faces. This character continuity facilitates connections to the different stories within the hazy chronology.
One of Goldin’s ‘casts’ is her friend Suzanne Fletcher, reiterated across the photobook in different contexts, chronicling the intensities of her life and identity. In Suzanne in Yellow Hotel Room, she is immersed in a moment of contemplation within the sour yellow pigments. Suzanne in the shower offers a depiction of uncensored nudity, her body reflects the warmth of the decorative orange tiles as she struggles to open her eyes. In Phillipe H. and Suzanne kissing at Euthanasia, we see the couple in a messy, passion fueled embrace, as if the camera was not present. The membrane between viewer and object is dissolved, as we permeate the photographed space.
Nan Goldin, Phillippe H. and Suzanne kissing at Euthanasia, New York City, 1981
This unerring intimacy is possible because Nan lived the same life of struggle and debauchery as her subjects, negating the role of estranged voyeur and harnessing the camera as if a mirror onto her own condition. In an interview she stated that ‘I didn’t photograph people I didn’t love. I had to feel a connection.’
Nan subverted traditional conventions of photography by inserting herself within the work, erasing the notion of voyeurism as a photographer. As well as sharing the vulnerable moments, she invites us to witness her own trauma. An example is the painfully honest Nan One Month After Being Battered, 1984, a visceral depiction of domestic abuse which she labelled ‘the hinge of the slideshow’, where she shifts from role of observer to that of participant. Her puffy face directly confronts the camera lens. Crimson-yellow bruises discolor her swollen eyes, and her glossy red lips disturbingly match her bloodied eyeball, paralleling feminine identifiers as a receptor for violence. This photo marks the end of an abusive relationship with her lover Brian, who is a protagonist with the Ballad.
Nan Goldin, Nan a month after being battered, 1984
Brian frequently appears in the Ballad, even on the front cover of the book is Nan and Brian in Bed. Through its representation of a quintessential couple’s experience of the ‘post-sex cigarette’, the image is suggestive of both the shot instant, and the moments preceding its conception. Amidst the hazy yellow ambience, Brian sits with his back to the camera whilst Nan stares at him with a steely look of desire. This establishes an uneasy power dynamic that upsets universal depictions of gender intimacy. Brian becomes the object of a dual observation; both Nan and the camera gaze upon him. However, we see a tentativeness within Nan’s gaze synonymous with the disjunction between the intimate sphere of the bedroom and the tangible separation between the couple. Once physically tangled moments before, they are now separated. This moment of discordance and doubt is often unarticulated within mainstream images, and Nan’s autobiographical approach facilitates it bringing to light.
Nan Goldin, Nan and Brian in Bed, 1983
When sitting in the dark viewing space of the Tate Modern, as part of the exhibition titled ‘Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera’, a few years ago, I distinctly remember the sense of unease yet strange comfort I felt as the jaunty eeriness of Velvet Underground’s ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ played in the background. I became encompassed within the emotive odyssey across desire, rage, and ecstasy, inebriated within this stark articulation of mortality and the universal human experience. I understood its permeating resonance today, despite its conception thirty-five years ago. Her work precedes the diaristic tendency to merge privacy with publicity through curations on Instagram and TikTok , yet these superficial images lack the rawness of Goldin’s, condemning them as ‘lacking any kind of emotional depth or context.’
Despite its subject matter, Nan’s work is infused with a tenderizing hope, pulsing with an optimism and desire. By elucidating beauty in the grittiest of situations, she became a touchstone for later photographers such as Juergen Teller and Corinne Day. Her most recent documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed expands her interest in film-making, contending with the Sackler Family and the oxycontin epidemic.
Notes:
Goldin, Nan. ‘Introduction’, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. (New York: Aperture, 1986)
Goldin, Nan. ‘I wanted to get high from a really early age.’ Interview with Sean O’Hagan. The Observer, 23 March 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/23/nan-goldin-photographer-wanted-get-high-early-age
Guggenheim Museum. ‘Nan Goldin.’ [Accessed 1 March 2023.] https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/nan-goldin