Photographer Nan Goldin's Work: Art or Porn?

Nan Goldin was born in 1953 in Washington D.C. After moving to Boston, in 1965 her sister Barbara committed suicide. This led to her moving to Lincoln, Massachusetts and taking up photography as a means to preserve every moment she could. No doubt the trauma of losing a sister helped with this decision. Nan enrolled in the Satya community school in Lincoln which was an alternative education center.

Nan Goldin and her two closest friends, David Armstrong and Suzanne Fletcher did a lot of experimentation with cross dressing and were very engaged in the drag queen scene of the 1970's. Nan Goldin often photographed drag queen beauty contests. This led to a great interest and lifelong devotion to exploring gender, sexuality, and counter-culture movements.

Nan Goldin then moved on to study at the Boston School of Fine Arts. This helped refine her photography style and gave her all the knowledge she would need to begin creating some of her most controversial works. In 1978, Nan Golding moved to New York and got heavily involved in alcohol, drugs, and relationships that were very abusive. She photographed a lot of this. Nan Goldin has many pictures of beaten and battered men and women which were part of her slide shows.

Much of Nan Goldins photography was displayed as slideshows with hundreds of slides set to rock and roll music. With all the nudity, drug use, and abusive photographs, there is no wonder people would come down hard and start debating if it was actually art or just a way to show off a bunch of naked people. The title of this slideshow is "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency".

Nan Goldin continued in the drug and counter-culture scene until the late 1980's when she entered a detox facility. There, Nan Goldin continued to take pictures. Many of them self-portraits.

The Artwork

Nan Goldins photography covers a very broad range of subject matter. From pretty rocks to nude children frolicking around, Nan Goldin covers it all. The big emphasis in the media is on the "pornographic" content. That's no fault of the media, it's just good news. There are many photographs of people after being beaten and tons of photographs of cross dressers.

Many of Nan Goldins photographs feature topless or fully nude women. Nude women showering, dancing, standing around. If they are nude, they are photographed. Many people deem this as pornography but really, most of these photographs are just human beings doing what they do. They aren't having sex or acting sexual most of the time.

The Newest Controversy

The week of September 24, 2007, Nan Goldins photograph entitled "Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing" was seized from Elton John's personal collection that was on loan to The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in England. Elton John is a well known collector of photographs and has a huge collection that numbers in the thousands by many famous artists. This particular photograph is part of a collection entitled "Thanksgiving" which is made up of 149 various photographs.

The authorities are deciding whether or not this picture breaks any laws

The piece in question depicts two very young girls around the age of 6 to 8. One is clothed and standing up and directly beneath her is the other girl naked with her legs spread while she is laying on her back. Interestingly, as I searched for this photo to see what the fuss was about, all results vanished. Way to go Internet!

I did find it before it disappeared and have to say I sure wouldn't want that picture anywhere near my home or computer. Even now after the short look I took I expect Chris Hanson from Dateline NBC to be dropping by and asking me some questions.

This is where that fine line between art and porn is. Would I call that art? Probably not. Porn? I don't think so. It was a picture of two young girls playing. That's all.