Nan Goldin Biography

Simon and Jessica in the shower,
Paris 2001
Cibachrome
Photographer: Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin was born September 12, 1953. She is an American fine-art and documentary photographer. It is interesting to see that her first solo show was based on her photographic journey amongst the city's gay and transsexual community, which was held in Boston 1973. This shows that she is open-minded.

Nan Goldin's work since 1995 has included a wide array of subject matters. She has images that expresses and intensifies love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality. She has affectionately documented women looking in mirrors, girls in bathrooms and barrooms, drag queens, sexual acts, and the culture of obsession and dependency. With the collaboration of Nobuyoshi Araki, they composed a book project, this project includes; New York City skylines, uncanny landscapes (notably of people in water), her lover, Siobhan, babies, parenthood and family life.

I chose the above picture because it was rather interesting in many ways. I feel it expresses a lot of love and passion; this expression has been conveyed by the positioning of the man’s hand in the woman hair and the body posture on the woman and her arms around her lover.

There is little fear being portrayed by the two characters in this image as one would think making love in a bath tub is quite the risky business considering the possibility of slipping and falling. It tells me a baby is going to come out of this moment. Nan Goldin has managed to compose a perfect frame of what she felt was important for the viewer, and the mood also gives the photograph an attractive feel to it.

Taryn Simon Biography

RONALD JONES
Scene of arrest, South Side, Chicago, Illinois
Served 8 years of a death sentence
for Rape and Murder, 2002
Shot by Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon was born 1975 she is an American fine art photographer, her photography and writing has been featured in New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, CNN, BBC, Frontline, and NPR. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Her most recent work, which I’m a fan of is titled (An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar). After reading through the notes under each photograph, the title of the project works perfectly with the photographs. I believe she’s trying to bring forth to her viewers a sense and indebt understanding of what is going on behind the scene.

Nevertheless I found her earlier work far more interesting and moving, (The Innocents), this project documents and illustrated cases of the wrongful convicted in the United States. I must say it is truly inspirational as Taryn Simon has been able to combine a multitude of emotions in these images by photographing each accused character at the very site where they were arrested. She also goes further by noting exactly what the characters in her photograph was accused of and how long they served in jail.

Looking at the whole picture and the information provided, one will defiantly understand the feeling of what has been conveyed and I must say I felt deep sorrow.