North East Stories- Research- Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is know for presenting her work in a form of a slide show, she based her early work around love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality; these frames are usually shot with available light. She has affectionately documented women looking in mirrors, girls in bathrooms and barrooms, drag queens, sexual acts, and the culture of obsession and dependency. The images are viewed like a private journal made public.

Goldin published The Ballad of Sexual Dependency in 1986 along with help from Marvin Heiferman, Mark Holborn, and Suzanne Fletcher, as a “visual diary” of a close group of people Goldin referred to as her “tribe”. This book contains a large selection of her photos including a forward written by herself. In this forward she describes this book as a “diary [she] lets people read”. The photos show a transition through Goldin’s travels and her life. In the end of her writing Goldin includes a small dedication “to the real memory of my sister, Barbara Goldin”.



Ive looked in Nans The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. I find the pictures very dark and to me it feels sordid and like a drug den....which thinking may be how is suppose to look from the word Dependency from the title. From the few photographers ive looked at im not a fan of the colours as it seems very orange and dark and the lives they are showing are very depressing. Not everyones life looks like this and it just makes me wonder why people always want to take photos of the lifestyle they are portraying in the photographs.....of course these pictures are from the 1980s whos to say if i take these type of photos someone in 20 years time will think mine look dark and depressing.