Nan Goldin: The Other Side

     I really enjoyed reading this passage after going over some of Nan Goldin's most famous work in Digital Media. It was specifically interesting to me because Goldin talk about her work in photography so calmly. Several of her closest friends died at a young age from AIDS or drug overdoses yet she shows little emotion in this passage about it. Her work is extremely powerful because of the way she photographed the queens she lived with, but emotionally it must have been hard to see her friends come and go. It was obvious in this passage that Nan did not live a simple and typical lifestyle. The fact that The Ballad of Sexual Dependency documented the type of lifestyle that Nan lived, makes it so personal and enhances the work. Even though Nan did not follow typical sexual orientation,she became close with others that had much in common. Nan talks as if the lifestyle her and her queens lived was nothing out of the ordinary, but to social standards it would have been a wild and unusual way to live, at the least. After seeing The Ballad of Sexual Dependency and reading about the process I can understand why the emotion and rebellion that was apparent in her photography became so popular.