Between the year 1972 and 1992, renowned photographer Nan Goldin produced a compilation of photographs that featured an epic sequence of drag queens who frequented a bar in Houston known as the Other Side. There are scenes of men who are dressed as women and portrayed to being in the most intimate and private moments of their ecstasy; getting dressed, putting on make-up and talking on the phone. These are the documented clique of photographs of highly saturated quality that illustrates the unconventional lifestyles of transsexuals and drag queen as portrayed by Nan Goldin. In light of this analysis, it is evident that Nan Goldin photographs are largely related to gender formation. This paper seeks to investigate and explicitly analyse her photo-book The Other Side which can be used as a great resource on showing Goldin’s female perspective and her general influence over photography. Additionally, this paper will further seek to investigate whether or not her photography correlates to the gender discourses from early 1970’s to the early 90’s. Do these photographs illustrate the conception of gender identity during this time frame?
Interestingly, Goldin uses catchy narrative techniques in her black and white photographs. For example, in the picture the Roommate in the kitchen she depicts a girl on the wall (Goldin, 17). Although it appears fuzzy, the image appears common, as if we have seen it before. It creates a sentimental feeling while connoting various aspects such as girlish sensitivity, innocence and a happy childhood. Additionally, it is precisely in our recognition of the meaning for the narrative that it works, permeating the roommate with similar characteristics. Generally, the effect of the image of the young girl in the picture is meant to tell the audience that the roommate was also an innocent and sensitive little girl once in her life. This is cleverly done so as to make us familiar with the identity of the roommate by making us sympathetic and understanding towards her.
Similar to other 20th century female photographers such as Lisette Model, Diane Arbus and Wegee, Nan Goldin’s special contribution and viewpoint on gender greatly adds to the diversity in personal photography. They are the female photographers who seemed to uphold various feminist theory creating a very personal relationship that portrays the vital role that women plays in their own era and also through how they impact the wold. Psychoanalysis and Feminism are among the major pillars of Nan Goldin’s deliberations. The key psychoanalysts’ figures are Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud and the feminist theorist Judith Butler. Associating Nan Goldin’s works and the feminist theories that were put forward by these scholars appears to have largely influenced her take on photography and ultimately making her an exceptional icon in the history of photography. According to Lacan, gender differentiation does not hinge on bodily organs as the Freudian theory suggest, but on a phantasmatic entity which is known as the Phallus; the symbol of mastery and ultimate plenitude. The Phallus is a very important concept that is considered suitable by feminists due to appropriation and re-signification, so as to allow for an array of new gender differentiation models.
The greatest aspect that distinguishes Nan Goldin from other practitioners in the field of documentary photography is this photographer’s relationship between herself and her subjects and also the self-presentation of her pictures (Goldin, 15). Openly casual and evoking immediacy of the usual snapshot aesthetic, these deeply involved and passionate portraits are most striking and captivating in their ability to capture a complicity between the subject and the photographer in the most intimate moments due to the amount of time that they spend together. Nan Goldin began taking pictures of her close friends, which later culminated into a 700 slides body of work that she referred to as the Ballad of sexual dependency, which later distilled into episodes that focuses on drag queens in The Other Side. Most of her works and images are documented from an exclusively first person account that comprised her personal life with her close friends, carried out as a visual diary of the subversion of gender and its identity performed in the images themselves (Pollock, 33). The main reason why Goldin was documenting her subject’s lives and also hers, was because she wanted to humanize them and also refute the common traditional views of their gender presentation and sexuality as pathological. In her photo book, she writes that, “The picture in this book are not meant to showcase people suffering gender euphoria but rather expressing gender euphoria” (Goldin, 32).
Femininity and glamour is a theme that Goldin desired to spread to the whole wold. Through her picture the Christmas at the other side. The use of the image of a man makes the photograph appear as those romantic Hollywood heroes of old (Terry and Jacqueline 312). It depicts Ivy offering the man a light. This can be used to show the connection between Ivy and the man as it does her Greta Garbo-like costume. That part of Ivy’s attire connotes femininity. Nonetheless, the visual clues that are used to aid in Goldin’s narratives in this black and white photographs have two major characteristics in common: they are very familiar to most of the people, and their meaning is somehow fixed. For instance, most of the people that would recognize Marilyn would associate her with more or less a similar type of narrative (Goldin 11).
Nan Goldin describes her works to being “very much about the issue of gender politics”, she argues that, it is meant to exhibit the distinction between male and female gender through more than the aspect of clothing or costume in almost all human society. It is imperative for one to identify themselves with the prescribed norms, guidelines and the laws that are used to define what form of clothing would be acceptable to which type of gender. During this period of time, ranging from 1970-1990, the rise of capitalism and industrial rationalisation largely influenced the great masculine renunciation of ostentation and flamboyance. From this period, a more sober and circumspect for of male dressing was standardized. Ultimately, a clear distinction of the modern masculine and feminine attire were later established. Therefore, these counter-cultural cross –dressing mostly functions to deviate the society from the fixed concepts of acceptable male and female dress. With regard to the association of cross gender impersonation which involve male bodied performers who are dressed as females, hence, the drag queen is normally characterized by the open display of female glamour.
During this period of time, especially in the year 1987, Goldin sought to use the aspect of photography to create awareness towards the spread of HIV/AIDS pandemic. Goldin had been shocked by the effects of AIDS on the community that she lived in, therefore proceeded to create the exhibition; “Witness against Our Vanishing”. In this year she had lost her long-time friend, Cookie Muller, who was both a performer and a writer, to the AIDS disease. In fact, her war against the spread of AIDS in New York is arguably one of the most politically artistic endeavour she has ever embarked on, since it took a definite stand rather than adhering to her usual approach of telling unbiased truth. She had numerous transgendered friends back in the 80’s, at this time the subject of her art largely revolved around unknown artists and other desolate inhabitants of New York underworld (Pollock, 33). It is around 1990 that she met a new crowd of transgendered individuals who made her start a new and extensive photographic project that was aimed at portraying them. This is the project that led to the creation of The other side, which spanned more than 20years of images on transgendered people.
Nonetheless, as much as her portraits are an on-going personal account with her transgendered friends, or acquaintances, it also appears that Goldin’s works are also reflective of her own life. Her brutal style of sincere documentation of honest documentation is most evident during her early self-portraits where her works were adopted as performances of her autobiography. Generally, the line between, the subject and the photographer is obliterated in Goldin’s treatment of herself as she enters the frame of her own photograph (Slade 684). For instance, the series known as All by Myself , is a presentation of an image of Goldin’s bruised face after she got beaten up by her boyfriend and also the physical and emotional anguish, , that she went through. Her self-portraits are seamlessly incorporated into her portrait photography. Notably, photographing herself with a blackened eye due to a beating, explicitly signifies her role not only as a photographer but also as a performer attempting to act out a role (Goldin 23). With regard to her method of representation, it is observed that she adopts the exhibitionist approach that reveals life occurrences without shame or explanations, she showcases her chaotic and spontaneous life in the company of the drag queens and the sex addicts in which she had involved herself with.
Alongside, Goldin’s portraits and images of the 1990’s, a growth of lesbian and gay studies emerged concurrently, influenced by the latest theoretical models of gender constructs which had been developed by feminist Judith Butler. Just like Garber, Butler had begun her theoretical framework by questioning the essentialism of the binary gender distinction. Butler’s main argument presupposes a flaw in the feminist theory that supposes that there exists an identity in all women (Terry and Jacqueline 304). She therefore illustrated how the issue of cross-dressing may subvert gender. Ultimately, Butler defines the gender aspect to being a stylized repetition of various acts, wherein gender is achieved through the stylization of that body (Slade 684). Through her argument, we realise that gender attributes are not expressive but peformative, and also there exists no identity form which act can be measured. The feminist theory that was put across by Butler is very significant to the context of Goldin’s portraits, since it deflects all the post enlightenment ideologies of feminist and psychoanalysis appears to reveal a normative masculinity and an excess of femininity.
In conclusion, it is evident that, Goldin’s works that has been documented in the photo-book The other side represents the underground drag subculture when it was at its peak in the New York city back in the eighties an the nineties and it acts as the perfect media for the subject matter that it seeks to portray. Thus, the inherently performative nature of photography appears to be a great medium for the performance of gender. In light of this explanation put forth in this essay, it is evident that the works of Nan Goldin points felinity as formative of transgender identity in our society.
Works Cited
Goldin, Nan. Theother Side. Zurich: Scalo, 2000. Print.
Goldin, Nan. Variety. New York, NY: Skira Rizzoli, 2009. Print.
Pollock, Griselda, ed. Psychoanalysis and the image: transdisciplinary perspectives. Wiley.
com, 2008.
Slade, Joseph W. Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide. Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 2000. Print.
Terry, Jennifer, and Jacqueline Urla. Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in
Science and Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Print.
