Personal Journeys and Fictional Autobiography

Personal Journeys and Fictional Autobiography

The course notes tell us that photographers who use their own lives and the lives of their friends and family demonstrate how effective it is to hang a body of work on. Several photographers are suggested as examples and these are listed below.

Nan Goldin

After a troubled upbringing when she ran away from home and was fostered on more than one occasion, Nan Goldin made her life among her new family the drag queens, junkies and prostitutes of New York.  She made this family the subject of her work over the years and it takes the form of a picture-and-text diary of her personal experiences.  In the Telegraph article and interview by Drusilla Beyfus  Goldin is quoted as saying that, outside her commercial work she would never photograph anyone that she wouldn't want to live with, giving as her reason that nobody has the right to photograph a stranger.  Much of her work is presented as a slide show and what is considered typical is the body of work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.  Although the relationship with her parents failed early on, some of the damage has been repaired over the years and she has since photographed her mother and she says that she is sensitive to her parents feelings about her sister who committed suicide at the age of 19 after often being in trouble with boys and confused about her sexuality. (Larkin, C. 2006)  Critics have commented that her sister's death influenced much of her work. (Beyfus,D. 2009) When she moved to New York from Boston she began to make he 'family' the subjects of her photographs and they became her family album.  She says in  The Ballad of Sexual Dependency  that this family was bonded not by blood or place but by a similar morality, the need to live fully and for the moment. (Befus, 2009)  Her photographs are shot in colour as snapshots and are of her family and lovers at their unconsidered moments in the bedroom, bathroom or bar, where daylight would be an intrusion.  Beyus tells us that many artists have begun by photographing the people around them, but what sets Goldin apart was her habit of living the life of her subjects. (Beyfus 2009)  She has been accused of making heroin use appear glamorous but in a 2012 interview with the Observer she called said that using heroin chic to sell clothes and perfume was reprehensible and evil.  She does admit to having a romantic view of drug culture when young and wanted to be a junkie, but she gave up drugs when she decided to use the idea of memory in her work. Her work has been censored in Brazil due to its explicitly sexual nature. (Wikipedia, 2015)

Certainly fascinating, Goldin's images are full of life and character and of a world that the vast majority of us cannot possibly comprehend.  Does that make us voyeurs??

Larry Sultan

The BBC series Genius of Photography tells us of Larry Sultan that he photographed his father and family over a 10 year period in the 70s and 80s as part of an elaborate project that included his parents own photos and home movies.  It was undertaken during the Reagan years which held dear to the values of family life, but a version that wasn't familiar to Sultan.

His images are posed and directed, rather than being straight portraits or documentary images rather like the genre of Tableaux.  To me they seem rather bland and false.

Elinor Carucci

Israeli-Americam Elinor Carucci lives in New York with her husband and two children where she works for The School of Visual Arts.  Her autobiographical work features very intimate images of herself and her family, far more intimate than most people would want to be made public I feel.  Many I feel are very private, some filled with obvious emotion and a few that make me laugh.

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham has also photographed his own family in less than flattering circumstances making these very private images public.  The BBC Genius of Photography website says that Billingham didn't worry about how his family ought to look when he began photographing them and their situation at the heart of working class life in Thatcher's Britain.  He wanted to paint his alcoholic father, but he was either comatose of wouldn't stay still so he took to photographing him instead.  Again these are in snap shot style and have created a family album that no ordinary family member would make never mind show, but they turned him into a celebrated photographer. (BBC, 2014)

Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe is famous for his often erotic nude photography often featuring black males and Patti Smith.  He is also well known for his still life images of flowers.  Unlike the work of Goldin, Sultan and Billingham, which cannot be said to be beautiful, Mapplethorpe's images are beautifully executed and printed black and white images.  Although not a fan of his nudes, beautiful though they may be, I find his flower images fabulous.

Again I do not see my work fitting into this category.

References

BBC (2014) Genius of Photography: We Are Family: Larry Sultan [online] Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/sultan.shtml [Accessed 12.6.15)

BBC (2014) Genius of Photography: We Are Family: Richard Billingham [online] Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/billingham.shtml [Accessed 13.6.15)

Beyfus, D. (2009) Nan Goldin: unafraid of the dark . [online]  The Telegraph Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/5648658/Nan-Goldin-unafraid-of-the-dark.html [Accessed 12.6.15]

Larkin, C. (2006) Nan Goldin: Chasing a Ghost [online] Art Critical Website Available from: http://www.artcritical.com/2006/07/01/nan-goldin-chasing-a-ghost/ [Accessed 12.6.15]

Wikipedia (2015) Nan Goldin [online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Goldin [Accessed 12.6.15]

Wikipedia (2015) Elinor Carucci [online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Carucci  [Accessed 12.6.15]