lessons with kate - nan goldin

 

do men and women see in different ways?

It's an age-old question and I'm sure we do. However, there's also a great range, diversity and mix on so many, many levels. We are, after all, only human and as always we need to look beyond the stereotype.

Click on this link for a fascinating research article by Mohammed Sattari and Sadegh Mousavi on the subject. 

this week's photographer

This week Kate introduces us to the work of Nan Goldin. Born in 1953 she had a very troubled childhood. Her older sister, Barbara, committed suicide when Nan was just eleven.

Nan wrote about this in her best known book, 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency'...

'This was in 1965, when teenage suicide was a taboo subject. I was very close to my sister and aware of some of the forces that led her to choose suicide. I saw the role that her sexuality and its repression played in her destruction. Because of the times, the early sixties, women who were angry and sexual were frightening, outside the range of acceptable behavior, beyond control. By the time she was eighteen, she saw that her only way to get out was to lie down on the tracks of the commuter train outside of Washington, D.C. It was an act of immense will.'

Nan Goldin ©

Nan left home aged thirteen. She began her photographic journey three years later when a staff member of the community she was part of at the time gave her a camera.

Much of Nan's work features the LGBTQ community and she had a particular affection for drag queens. She also documented the nascent post-punk music scene and its hard-core drug culture, rooted primarily in New York's Bowery neighbourhood.

Nan's photography is characterised by a snapshot aesthetic, full of vivid colour and casual poses.

But behind the brash surface lies a much deeper, empathetic truth. These are Nan's people, this is Nan's tribe.

the challenge

This week's challenge was to take photographs in Nan's style on the theme of, 'keep your curiosity alive'.

Here's four pictures from my shoot.

what did I do?

The technical bits - upping the saturation levels, choosing an appropriate film effect and searching out a colourful neon-lit environment.

The creative bit - a quick-fire identification of patterns likely to produce the results I was after. I saw four connected elements immediately.

The first was my tribe - photographers, of course. The lady pictured in the shots is Dawn, a fellow member of Kate Green's photography group. The second was Dawn's note-book lying on the floor beside her chair. The image on the back cover suited exactly what I had in mind.

The next element was some neon-lighting which I knew I could find just down the corridor in the bar area of the MAC. I wanted to create a Bladerunner-type atmosphere.

The fourth and final element was the signage on display, in particular the illuminated sign above the entrance to the cinema.

what did I learn?

I adore the creative process. The ideas fill me, I see rather than I look.

There are connections in absolutely everything around us. They are not random. If we take time and stop looking for them we can see them.