20/10/2019, Tate Modern
This weekend, I visited the Tate Modern again. There was a photography exhibition of a female free photographer, Nan Goldin, from the US. But I was told that people were not allowed to take any photos of them. What a pity, I just only recorded them in my mind.
Nan Goldin, born in 1950s, is an independent American photographer in a new age full of rights movements like LGBT, femaleness and even the sexual dependency. Most of her photos were shot in a style of snapshots by hands at any time and any places. The essential feature in her works is breaking the traditional structures of photography and contents of storytelling. And her option of using snapshots seems to bridge the gap between the serious arts from schools and universal life of individuals.
This exhibition showed some of Nan’s works starting with the Ballad of Sexual Dependency recording people’s private sexual lives and her own experience of violence and injuries with her husband. She framed lots of stark-naked people in private places like bed or toilet, and most of them are young men with addicted faces in the gathering. Moreover, some is showing her wound after a fight or something. From these works, she seems like to catch people’s facial expressions in any moment and angle without any designed framework of the photos, and showing people’s unveiled bodies directly to the audience. It is apparent that she is good at dealing with colours and use nuance on colours to create a harmonious vision.
Nan’s photography seems so close to the daily life in that age when modern lifestyle rebuilt young people’s values of living in many areas. For instance, loads of Americans were drawn to having fun like drugs, heavy metal music and sexual activities. These new entertainments could lead a mess at their mental worlds. It reveals that Nan’s camera just honestly captured these moments of crazy status or tired feelings. Her photos of violence are only part of such mess in the daily society.
Some critics might think Nan Goldin is like a rebel outside the classic school of photography and lacking the eyes of seeking positive mood in the life. While others thought this could be considered as a revolution of photography art. And moreover, she herself is a vital reflection of that age of modern. Personally, I think her exploration made sense on some level owing to some issues not being solved nowadays. Yer it is still difficult to judge her works because of the negative messages she wanted to send and the straight reality that she recorded by her camera.