Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency was written as an open diary – a way to ensure that no one would rewrite her own history, and create a way to remember the pain she endured throughout her life. “I don’t ever want to be susceptible to anyone else’s version of my history” she states (Ballad of Sexual Dependency 9).

Goldin’s approach to her book doesn’t include an explicit portrait of her Jewish identity. However, imbued in her text is that background of abandoning a middle-class background following two treacherous experiences: 1) the suicide of her sister when Nan was 11 and 2) the experience of sexual abuse at the shiva of the same death. She would go on to get schooling in a “hippy” school in Boston, where she would pick up her first camera: a Polaroid, given to her by a teacher.

Similar to Goldin, prior to college I also longed to escape the mundanity of my past. She states, “I grew up in a period in which the glue of suburbia was denial… I needed to get away.” While I haven’t experienced sexual or drug abuse, I understand the feelings of wanting to escape one’s past and delve deeper into the experience of being human. I think that’s why people seek experiences that fill their senses, their souls, with meaning, and maybe a fleeting sense of purpose.

I go through phases where life is mundane, but filled with meaning, and times when I realize that I’m still running. There is a sense of transience, a perpetual sense of “temporary” that is ever present in my mind. The desire to get ahead, the desire to stay. Goldin states that “It took a certain level of fearlessness, a wildness, quick changes—of clothes, of friends, of lovers, of cities.” I think I might have that. But I need to find it.

Through this project, I seek to explore that depth that Goldin encountered when creating the foundation for her career in the Balled of Sexual Dependency. Goldin states, “When I was a kid I thought, What a waste if I don’t leave a mark on the world. Through the Ballad I found a way to make a mark.” In her work, and in my project, I seem to reflect Goldin’s themes of beauty among grime and disarray. The photos almost beckon as if they’re fighting for their own existence, one that will survive the test of time as photo icons. 

Moreover, Goldin explores themes of abuse and dependence, especially being in the queer community at the peak of the HIV/AID’s crisis. She notes that the book is now a means of not forgetting those individuals in her life who died. Feelings of impermanence are something I want to draw on in this project.

“The Ballad” was Goldin’s first book and remains her best known, a benchmark for photographers who believe, as she does, in the narrative of the self, the private and public exhibition we call “being.” – The New Yorker

I want to create a symbolic diary of self, to reflect my inner questions. At that, it might appear dramatized at times. Sometimes we don’t know what the self is. I want to create a modern take on Goldin’s work.

Nan Goldin had a standard process that included the exclusive use of Kodachrome slide film, printed and developed using the Cibachrome process (Chris Duesing). Originally, she shot on Polaroids, her first camera, but soon would move on. She found that being able to project her film was her preferred method of presenting. Nan’s creative process was rather organic, as she–whether consciously or unconsciously–envelop herself in environments that were eerie, dark, twisted, and filled with passion. Her photos are documentary in nature, producing candid photographs as well as some that are clearly curated and directed. Some shots would never have been possible without asking for explicit permission (after all, a photo of “Bobby Masterbating”), or couples having sex. Frankly, I don’t know if this is even yet possible for me to find without taking drastic measures, such as explicitly requesting it. Some of my favorite photos in her series are individuals in their beds, or in private spaces. I think exploring the “private” is what makes this photobook so unique. There is an essence of performative nature, or romanticism of her subjects that wouldn’t be possible without some direction. I don’t trust Goldin as a narrator of her work: The subjects are still, but performing actions, and clearly have a nature of movement (for example, someone on a bed–still– but at the same time looking as if they’re in motion. It is clear that there are some poses and postures where Nan would ask them to pause in their motion for her); no matter what, Nan is intruding on her subjects’ private life; this is directive to some degree. Her subjects are performing for her. Because Nan is usually close to her subjects in interior spaces, I’d assume she’d have to shoot pretty open (aperture) and the rooms are either naturally lit (ambient lighting as well at night), or sometimes with flash. The flash isn’t aggressive in nature, but softer tones of light. Moreover, the way the book is laid out, creates a “diptych” element – the photos that a paired are logically chosen (for example, a pastel blue next to red-light interior).

I will use my digital camera while adding grain and color correction in “post,” and plan to find lamps that will evoke the warm tones in some of her photos. Some of my friends are willing to let me into their private lives. I’ll take them in their rooms and bathrooms, and even some bathrooms around campus. I’m unironically a big fan of bathrooms. 

Goldin’s attempt to express the “private” express demonstrate the idea of split or separate identity. We act differently in private than in public. We might be more willing to revel in our collective pain, and express our natural states. Nan is iconic in this sense, expressing the rawness of human nature.

The possibility of engaging with friends on an intimate level – both through dialogue and visual interpretation of their lives – made for an interesting canvas on which to paint on. As a photographer, I never truly seemed to ask friends if this was something I could even had access to, but now I had an excuse to document a sliver of their lives. I now had access to the private lives of friends in ways I never had before. I was looking for a private image of my friends, the same that Larry Sultan looked to of his parents, and his father in particular: “…I’m interested in something more private, in what happens between events–that brief moment between thoughts when you forget yourself” (9). I wanted my friends to lose any sense of what I wanted from them, and to display what they truly felt to be in line with their identity and life situation.

In particular, Goldin claimed her approach to be candid. Frankly, the drama provoked in the photographs makes it hard to believe that each photograph wasn’t somewhat orchestrated, as I commonly found my subjects asking for direction. “Is this what you want? What should I do?” The raw elements of life are sometimes interpreted based on the subjects’ past and current experiences, i.e., what is their current life situation and how is it, in particular, that they want to portray themselves on camera. Undoubtedly, emulation is certainly a method of the subject – an extraneous variable, if you will – to how the subject acts when receiving a photo to model after. In some cases, the photographs were taken directly from Nan Goldin’s body of work, where others were taken in the spirit of Nan Goldin’s work, including themes, colors, lighting, emotions and attitudes. Giving the subject freedom was imperative to achieving the aesthetic, nonetheless. I suppose that a level of acting is non-negotiable when knowledgeably in front of a camera, hence, a subject might find an emotion or look they most connect with, and perpetuate that emotion for the remainder of a shoot. Sometimes shoots would experiment with different emotions, but I’d argue that a majority of the shots have a seeming “longing” to them that is experienced in Goldin’s photos. Some pensive, others editorial, Goldin’s photos certainly have a grimey-ness to them that is hard to emulate and find. I’m not friends with addicts. I’m not friends with transgender individuals. Well, I guess I am friends with depressed individuals, who do experience a sense of foreboding, disillusionment, longing, and, at times, helplessness.

The camera is able to capture this essence, which I like to call this one’s “life situation” – or what one is currently experiencing in their lives from their feelings, their relationships, the circumstances on which we encounter each other. Sometimes friends become open about these, others people cope by being more closed. They share how they’d cannabis to escape their crippling anxiety, and how when life becomes overwhelming the only thing they can do is retreat. Party. Get drunk. Or how men would objectify them, their beauty, the exact thing being captured on camera. Was I seemingly just like these men? A voyeur who aimed to capture them in their beauty? I’d like to make the case that, no, I wanted my subjects to be “raw” and “minimal.” If a friend wanted something more grandiose than imagined, I showed them Goldin’s photos, and told them: we want to see you for who you are. A friend might interpret this differently depending on who they are. Some might wear their pain on their lips, after a breakup. Their eyes glisten widely, allowing the viewer only a sliver of the suffering they experienced at the hands of their past loved one. Getting behind the camera enabled them to bleed, seemingly a part of the grieving process.

Another friend has struggled with feelings of belonging, isolation, identity, and existence. The lack of validation they receive would reveal itself during the shoot; I would go about the shoot, and find myself uncertain of the photos we were taking. I found myself nervous around them, questioning whether it was what they wanted instead of what I wanted. It was one of my first shoots, a collaborative process, one that I needed to experience to gain confidence behind the camera and in determining my process going forward. It was almost as though their lack of assertiveness translated into my lack of assertiveness. I believe the relationship I had with the individuals would show up in the photos. The friends whom I had deeper connections to were not afraid to wear their vulnerabilities around me. The men, I found, aimed to present in more masculine ways, and present their masculinity in conjunction with their pain.

Laura S. Levitt analyzes the act of identification. I liken this, in particular, to my subjects choosing particular displays from which to identify within specific photographs of Goldin’s oeuvre (while I had a few particular photographs in mind). She said that the process of identification is a process of grieving for the loss of love-objects. I found this particularly confounding, but there was inherent loss in the photographs – not of what was lost physically, but more a sense of innocence lost, and a sense of loss of certainty when entering the world and leaving childhood behind. She goes on: “Identification engages us in an interplay between sameness and difference. As we acknowledge connections through similarities of dress or comportment or even the familiarity of the tone or content of a narrative we also simultaneously recall differences between ourselves and others.” Through this lens, we understand the individual in the photograph as a mourner, someone who killed a past identity and are in search of a new one. They lost a sense of their old self, and must work again to find who they are. These photos attempt to help them engage with their own identity in an act of taking ownership over their bodies, their environments to declare their truth. “Photographs capture these ephemeral moments and make them stand still,” says Levitt. The photographs borderline portraiture and documentary.

Parr and Badger point out that critics have taken to question the validity of the photographer as an “auteur” – however, after investigating Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, it is clear that the photographer must act as an auteur. They must curate their final product so as to leave a lasting impression and clear imprint of who they are as an individual and artist.

In a way, Goldin was able to use her relationships and environments as a reflection of her inner self. Friends: finding their way through life, floating, uncertain, questioning. I thought, like Goldin, the photos reflect internal dialogue and questioning, themes of exposure, vulnerability and depression prominent throughout. I think that the photos enable us to embody our pain while coexisting alongside beauty. For the truth is, there exists beauty in internal conflict itself. The beauty lies in the emotion and vulnerability that is worn on our sleeves, in the fact that we can be ourselves and know that others have similar experiences as well. This was not a thought when taking the photos, but came up after the fact. 

(On the technical side of things, I sought to play with 1) light; fragmented light; colors; and reflections 2) environment, be they bathrooms, living rooms filled with books, bedrooms with posters, mirrors, and textures and 3) color science, which is done in post-processing; I added grain, warmed up the shadows, and sometimes would add teal to the highlights; Goldin’s oranges seemed to be saturated at times, so I played with this. Similarly, lamps and props were manipulated and played with to achieve the aesthetic we were looking for. All props were owned by the subjects, enabling authentic portrayal.)

Investigating Goldin’s approach proved to be more natural than some might think. For me, my personal relationships exist with a sense of intimacy, a sense of “knowing the other” that is conducive for taking authentic photographs. Upon watching Goldin’s interviews, I first thought her rude, and perhaps maybe even somewhat evil. However, I came to understand and empathize with the pain she endured (like she explains she experiences in her own photographic process here), and recognized that — like her photographs — she’s able to wear her pain on her sleeve without hiding. In some ways, she makes this her strength. There exist an equal sense of helplessness and longing in her eyes, after all the battles she’s fought for years. I cannot say that I’ve experienced the same kind of trauma. But a sense of loss, a sense of questioning and foreboding, I have. What originally existed as an investigation of aesthetic became one of emotion and anthropological documentation. It was more personal than merely “taking your friends’ pictures.” It meant engaging on a new wavelength outside of just verbal communication. It meant engaging with the body, with emotion, and speaking with the words unsaid.

Today, Gen-Z grapples with similar experiences of previous generations. I think now that we have access to view the entirety of society on social media, we also believe that maybe we aren’t that special. Maybe our experience here on this earth isn’t that special either. But when we come together to create meaning, and engage in deep connection, I do believe that we are seen–even if temporarily. When we come to identify with others, is a vehicle for coming to accept the self.

Sources Used:

• Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home
• Laura S. Levitt’s Photographing American Jews
• Parr and Badger’s Photobook Intro
• Select Photos from Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency