Nan Goldin: A photographer who captured the raw beauty of life

Nan Goldin is one of the most important and influential photographers of our time, and has been a direct influence on the series I am currently creating. Her work is known for its raw intimacy, unflinching honesty, and uncompromising exploration of difficult subjects such as love, loss, addiction, and sexuality. 

She is a true pioneer in the field of photography, inspiring a generations of photographers to be more honest and vulnerable in their work. She has also shown that photography can be used to document and explore difficult subjects in a way that is both informative and compassionate.

Goldin's work has also been influential in the development of autobiographical photography. She has shown that photography can be used to tell one's own story in a way that is both personal and universal.

Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1953. She began taking photographs at a young age, and by the time she was a teenager, she was deeply involved in the Boston underground scene. In the early 1970s, Goldin moved to New York City, where she quickly became a fixture of the city's downtown punk and new wave scene. She began documenting the lives of her friends and lovers, capturing the raw and intimate moments of their everyday lives.

During this time, Goldin began to develop her signature style of photography. Her work is often described as being "snapshot-like" in its intimacy and immediacy. She frequently used flash and close-up angles, and her subjects were often her friends, lovers, and fellow artists.

In 1986, Goldin published her seminal work, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. This book, which was based on a series of photographs that Goldin had been taking for over a decade, chronicled the lives of her friends and lovers, many of whom were struggling with addiction and other personal demons. The book is a powerful and moving document of a time and a place, and it is considered to be one of the most important photobooks of the 20th century.

Here are just a few of the things that make Nan Goldin's photography so unique and special:

• Her use of color: Goldin's photographs are known for their vibrant and saturated colors. This helps to create a sense of intimacy and immediacy in her work.
• Her candid moments: Goldin's photographs are often candid and unposed. This gives them a sense of authenticity and realism.
• Her personal subject matter: Goldin's photographs often explore personal and intimate themes. This makes her work feel relatable and emotionally resonant.

Love

Goldin's work is often infused with a deep sense of love for her subjects. She photographs her friends, lovers, and family with intimacy and compassion. She shows us the moments of joy and connection, but also the pain and heartbreak that can come with love. In her photograph The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1982), Goldin captures the moment of her lover, Cookie Mueller, breaking up with her. Mueller's face is contorted in pain, but her eyes are also filled with love and longing. This photograph is a powerful testament to the power of love, even in its most difficult moments.

Loss

Goldin has lost many loved ones to AIDS, addiction, and other tragedies. Her work is a way of processing her grief and honoring the memory of those she has lost. In her photograph AIDS: A Memoir (1987), Goldin documents the death of her friend David Armstrong from AIDS. The photograph shows Armstrong lying on his deathbed, surrounded by his loved ones. It is a heartbreaking image, but it is also a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit.

Addiction

Goldin has struggled with addiction herself, and she has used her photography to explore the dark and often lonely world of addiction. In her photograph Self-Portrait with Bruise (1984), Goldin shows herself with a black eye, the result of a drug-fueled altercation. The photograph is a raw and honest look at the physical and emotional toll that addiction can take.

Identity

Goldin's work also explores themes of identity, particularly gender identity and sexuality. She has photographed many drag queens and transgender people, and her work has helped to raise awareness of these marginalized communities. In her photograph Nan and Brian in Bed (1983), Goldin captures the moment of intimacy between herself and her transgender lover, Brian. The photograph is a celebration of love and acceptance, and it challenges traditional notions of gender and sexuality.

Activism

In addition to her photography, Goldin is also a passionate activist. She is a founding member of P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), an advocacy group that fights against the opioid epidemic. She has also been a vocal critic of the Sackler family, whose company Purdue Pharma is responsible for manufacturing OxyContin, one of the most addictive prescription painkillers on the market.

In 2017, Goldin launched a campaign called "Sackler Pain." The campaign involved staging protests at museums and galleries that were receiving donations from the Sackler family. Goldin's campaign has been successful in raising awareness of the opioid epidemic and the role that the Sackler family has played in it.

Diane Arbus: The photographer who challenged the status quo

Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was an American photographer has had a distinct influence on me. She is known for her stark, often unsettling portraits of people on the margins of society. Her work challenged conventional beauty standards and explored themes of identity, sexuality, and otherness, and continues to be debated and discussed today.

She pioneered the use of photography to explore complex social and psychological issues. Arbus's work challenged viewers to think about identity, sexuality, and otherness in new ways. She showed that photography can be a powerful tool for self-expression. Arbus's portraits were deeply personal and reflective of her own inner world.

One of the most significant ways in which Arbus has impacted artists today is by inspiring them to challenge social norms. Her work often focused on overlooked communities, and it forced viewers to confront difficult and uncomfortable subjects. This has inspired many contemporary artists to create work that addresses social injustice and challenges the status quo.

Her subjects included dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, and people with disabilities. Some critics accused her of exploiting her subjects and of voyeurism. Others praised her for her courage and her willingness to challenge the status quo. She also photographed people in everyday settings, such as families, couples, and children. Her portraits are often characterized by their intimacy, their honesty, and their unflinching gaze.

Arbus's work has challenged artists to think about the role of photography in society and to question the boundaries between art and exploitation. She has also shown artists the power of photography to reveal the hidden truths of the human condition.

She showed that there is beauty in all people, even those who are different from us. Arbus's portraits helped to break down stereotypes and to show that everyone is worthy of respect.

She was a true pioneer, and her legacy continues to inspire photographers and artists around the world. Her influence can be seen in the work of artists such as Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Joel-Peter Witkin, and David LaChapelle.

In addition to her impact on individual artists, Arbus's work has also had a broader impact on the art world. She has helped to legitimize documentary photography as a form of fine art, and she has shown that photography can be used to explore difficult and complex subjects. Arbus's work has also helped to expand the definition of beauty, and it has shown that all people have something to offer the world.

In 1971, Arbus committed suicide at the age of 48. Her work was posthumously celebrated in a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1972.

Florence Knoll Bassett, Designer of the Modern American Office

Florence Knoll Bassett, Designer of the Modern American Office

Florence Knoll Bassett, a pioneering designer and entrepreneur who created the modern look and feel of America’s postwar corporate office with sleek furniture, artistic textiles and an uncluttered, free-flowing workplace environment, died on Friday in Coral Cables, Fla. She was 101.

To connoisseurs of Modernism, the mid-20th-century designs of Florence Knoll, as she was known, were — and still are — the essence of the genre’s clean, functional forms. Transcending design fads, they are still influential, still contemporary, still common in offices, homes and public spaces, still found in dealers’ showrooms and represented in museum collections.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/style/frances-knoll-bassett-dead.html

Earliest known painting of George Washington

This is the youthful George Washington painted in his 40s, in red soldiers waistcoat and pale sash, round his neck he wore a silver officer’s pendant, marked with the British royal coat of arms, painted by the artist Charles Willson Peale. A confident man, accustomed to command, this was the earliest known painting of the country’s first president and the man who would lead the Colonial forces to victory in the Revolutionary War. In it, Washington wears a blue coat, with red facings and silver trim, evidence that he was a provincial soldier, not an officer in the British army he was serving. The famous portrait returned to display at Mount Vernon on Thursday for the first time since 1802.

Washington Post

CARMEN HERRERA: LINES OF SIGHT

Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight is the first museum exhibition of this groundbreaking artist in New York City in nearly two decades. Focusing on the years 1948 to 1978, the period during which Herrera developed her signature style, the show features more than fifty works, including paintings, three-dimensional works, and works on paper. It begins with the formative period following World War II, when Herrera lived in Paris and experimented with different modes of abstraction before establishing the visual language that she would explore with great nuance for the succeeding five decades. Many of these works have never been displayed before in a museum.

CARMEN HERRERA: LINES OF SIGHT at the Whitney Museum

Picasso Portraits

A perceptive teenage self-portrait of 1896, executed while Picasso was studying art in Barcelona, asserts the maturity of his juvenilia. This, in turn, prepares us for the constant shifting of depictive modes with which the artist, over the course of his lifetime, shocked and delighted viewers while concurrently confounding curators and scholars. A large and familiar, completely different, self-portrait of 1906 not only channels Cézanne but also prepares us for Picasso’s lifelong dialogue with other artists, seen throughout the show, even while he was being very self-consciously inventive.

‘Picasso Portraits’ Review: Face to Many Faces With a Modern Master - WSJ

National Portrait Gallery in London

Rineke Dijkstra

Since the early 1990s, Rineke Dijkstra has produced a complex body of photographic and video work, offering a contemporary take on the genre of portraiture. Her large-scale color photographs of young, typically adolescent subjects recall 17th-century Dutch painting in their scale and visual acuity. The minimal contextual details present in her photographs and videos encourage us to focus on the exchange between photographer and subject and the relationship between viewer and viewed.