Nan Goldin Photography

30th June 2007
Nan Goldin

“The complete disregard for the camera’s presence indicates its complete saturation in their lives. The subject neither notices nor seems to care that someone has been invited into their private moment.”

Nan Goldin is someone I deeply admire and her style and class of photography, something I aspire to. In a similar way to Richard Billingham, Goldin’s style appears completely natural and uninhibited.

Goldin uses an interesting technique of nearly always using a flash, deviating from her original work of only shooting in black and white. The flash has become so much a characteristic of her work that it is often referred to as the ‘Goldin Look’. This technique results in highly coloured deep hues, which show her subjects in an exaggerated natural light. One image, ‘Kenny in His Room’ shows a naked young man lying on his bed asleep, which has been created using this method of a 35mm film and a printing process called cibachrome which prints photographs from slides allowing the photographer to achieve a sharp, bright quality of colour. The effect here is that this already personal image is perhaps become even more omniscient, with the man’s skin tone being extremely clear and detailed; this is not an airbrushed image, we can see ‘blemishes’, which creates an extremely natural image.

What attracts me to Goldin is that fact that she works at an extremely intimate level, her life is her work and her work is her life. This ‘snapshot’ esque style is a documentation of her life. Goldin’s work shows a complete disregard for the presence of the camera and intimate, personal moments are often captured which gives an extremely unaffected and raw result. A particular quote from Goldin, which inspired me greatly, explained how her camera is part of her everyday life, “as much as eating, talking and sex. The instant of photography, instead of creating distance, is a moment of clarity and emotional connection for me. There is a popular notion that the photographer by nature is a voyeur, the last one invited to the party. But I’m not crashing, this is my party.” The concept of a camera being just as much a part of you as anything else is intriguing to me; the thought that one could take quality photographs of people without them even acting towards it is something I strive to.

Nan Goldin is a great inspiration to me and I aspire to take images that are natural and unaffected. By considering her work I can begin to understand human reaction to the camera and how to get past this in order to create an image that is free and as natural as possible.