Nancy Goldin is a photographer that I first discovered at the Museum of modern art in New York City and absolutely fell in love with. The workings of her mind seem a lot similar to my own and that’s something very intriguing to me. I’ve read through articles and interviews and the way she describes her photos and experiences is almost exactly what I took away from them. I tend to learn the most about myself through my own and other peoples art, and one collection of photographs called “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” resonated with me the most.
The ballad of sexual dependency is a visual diary consisting of photographs that depicted Nancy’s personal struggle for intimacy and understanding between her friends, family, and lovers. Goldin’s photography was rich with color and mostly comprised of candid images that each tell their own intimate story. Goldin, when speaking of these photos says: “Real memory, which these pictures trigger, is an invocation of the color, smell, sound, and physical presence, the density and flavor of life.” I think the thing I admire most about this photo set is how it captures such an important part of human nature, the need to connect.
In a new book by Nancy titled “diving for pearls”, she explained that the title of the book is how she always referred to photography. She writes: “If you took a million pictures, you were lucky to come out with one or two gems. . . . I never learned control over my machines. I made every mistake in the book. But the technical mistakes allowed for magic. . . . Random psychological subtexts that I never would have thought to intentionally create. The subconscious made visible—though whether mine or the camera’s I don’t know. . . .”. This is one of her many quotes that makes her my favorite artist. The rawness, the way she captured the emotion of the room and the people in it, the stories she told by simply pointing and shooting. I can go down to the beach at sunrise and set my camera up on a tripod, making the exposure and aperture perfect, and come out with a beautiful photo, and I have, but those photos don’t even slightly compare to the photos i’ve quickly snapped with little thought, of all the people i’ve loved. I hope to one day publish a photo book like “the ballad of sexual dependency”, that tells my own story through photographs.