"I'm a snapshot photographer": Nan Goldin

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<p>I'm surprised so few of us even mention early experience with photography</p>

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<p>My most early experience with photography was browsing through the distinctly black and white wedding album of my parents and seeing the vivid wall projected slides of their honeymoon in Ibiza ( shot with a Zorki ), again and again, and also my own baby pictures and innocent stuff like that. Also, from the time I was about six or so and for some nine subsequent years, my dad used to literally shoot a picture of the whole family at the carnival. You know like in a gun stall attraction, where you aim and shoot at a mark and when you hit it a polaroid picture is taken.<br /> I remember that with each aim and possible hit we had to pose for the latent photograph to be, but then a miss, and reload, and posing and anticipating again for that metallic PING...So some of those yearly polaroid pics from those carnival shooting stands were synchronistically unposed pictures, where we hadn't anticipated the hitting of the mark enough ( in some years it was hit at the first or second attempt and we were all looking at the point above the bulls-eye, where the camera was ).<br /> I also remember noticing the strangers in the backgrounds of those polaroids ( always at night with flash ) who would sometimes "pollute" our traditional family picture with their passing but <em>fixed</em> presence, which too was all part of the deal and fun of it I guess. <br /> I have a large box of all those and other family pictures, claimed from my dad's attic, and it has been waiting to be scanned and put into a book for some time now. When I have "time"...</p>

<p>My first camera was a Pentax P30 and I still have it.</p>

<p>But besides that, as a child I read more books and listened to more music ( making cassette tapes ) than that I looked at photographs or pictures. Music was my first love, not photography.</p>

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<p>Children don't necessarily see things the way we think they do. They're born to fake, that's how they learn to be big people. Some see things darkly, through unabated rage or suffering, or in chaotic, confused ways.</p>

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<p>We all know how children see since we all saw as children at one time. When I said with 'wondrous eyes', I very much meant the potential for the dark and unknown too, a la those early "dark knowings" evoked by stories of the Brothers Grimm and Roald Dahl,....Conceptualising death for the first time in the form of seeing pink babybirds that were fallen out of their nest or dead bloated cows....Conceptualising sex for the first time in the form of some "romantic scene" in a movie on tv ( after or before having played doctor with the girl next door, I'm not sure anymore )...</p>

<p>Here's a link from a thread in the off topic forum, don't know if it relates to this topic of the early photographic experiences of photographers :<br /> http://www.masters-of-photography.com/L/lartigue/lartigue_articles3.html</p>

<p>Phylo you are right, some early experiences are in demand.<br>

The first intense experience I had with photography was when I was about 14 and went for holidays to the the Snowdon Mountain area in Northern Wales, UK. Anyone that knows these mountains, would know that they are slate mountains with very little vegetation, all in dark green and black shades of the slates, buried in the light of showers and dark clouds, mostly. A medieval mystery world with names like the Lake of Trawsfynydd. Walking in the mountains I got so impressed of these surrealistic surroundings that I bought a great number of films (Afga, black and white 100 iso - as far a I remember) and started shooting with my first Zeiss camera (I still have it) especially close-up scenes and scenes of the lakes (light green !).<br>

I came back from that holiday and was occupied in the dark room, I had already at that time, for months and even years. These photos, that mostly were of bad quality and very little to see, opened up my interest for old English literature and poems and marked engagements and even professional engagement later on. I still shoot similar scenes with passion.</p>

<p>Virginal experience: When I was in 2nd grade, my father went out to photograph a nearly completed building he had designed, and took me along. I had already been with him on other photo-excursions, and he always had a Leica with him for family snaps and personal pictures, but that day remains engraved in memory. Before starting out on his business with his Rolleiflex, big tripod and Leicas, he loaded a IIIf with film, set up the exposure for the intense light of that day, zone focused it and handed it to me, and turned me loose to photograph. I know how the camera is supposed to capture the soul of what lies before it, but that day it worked backwards: The soul it captured was my own.<br>

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<p>Some things from my childhood that have carried over into my photography (some in very abstract ways) to this day are:</p>

<p>Insatiable curiosity and fascination. A combination of a warm/emotional being and sometime icy cold analytical mind. Thanks to a lengthy stint in Catholic school (and later as an altar boy), my universe expanded into yet another dimension and life-long idea, that of thinking and/or believing that there's an implicit order to things. All things, and maybe that it's hiding in plain view. My grandmother was a Franco/Swiss spiritist-bruja-seer and master thin-slicer who influenced me in ways I cannot explain. My home environment was one of art, music, arts events, ballet, architecture, parties, early computer system analysis, fashion, trendoid Modernism, and while all that didn't stay with me, the broad range of interests has, and eclecticism. Also from the religious upbringing, seeing so many desperately poor people as a child, combined with the unspeakably brutal military excesses and ensuing reactions in my native country, a sense of compassion, humanism and respect for the persistency and fragility of life. </p>

 

<p>Luis G.<br /> I compliment you on your wonderful, expressive writing.<br /> john<br /> John (Crosley)</p>

<p>Thank you, John C.</p>

<p>Nan Goldin. I now recall seeing her work in New York some years ago. Heroin addicts, naked, shooting up. The photography was seductive and for the first time in my life I understood why some people would put their lives in danger by doing hard drugs.</p>

<p>Reading about her I could understand why a Nice Jewish Girl from a troubled middle class suburban family would be drawn to the down-and-out world that she as chosen to photograph.</p>

<p>Balzac says somewhere--and this is a loose paraphrase--that to learn what is said in the servants' quarters is an easy task but to learn of the words passed in the salons--that takes hard work.</p>

<p>Unless we are expert gatecrashers (I admit to journeyman status) the salons are closed to us. On the other hand the low life is an open door. It is egalitarian, accepting and generally speaking non-judgmental. It has a place for the alienated and the eccentric. It is is also a place that can quickly eat you up if you are not careful. That Goldin has thrived and survived in that world is amazing, even praiseworthy.</p>

<p><br /> After viewing Goldin's sexually charged drug addicts two thoughts crossed my mind. One, that this is work that I could never do. Two, that Goldin was one kind of artist and I was another.</p>

<p>Having come to this epiphany I was able to enjoy Goldin's work with a detached empathy.</p>

<p>Nan Godin is a fine photographer in her chosen world, as was Maplethorpe.</p>

<p>I do not find her work offensive. It is sympathetic. What she shows us is a part of life that those of us who live more or less prosperous and sane lives prefer not to see.</p>

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<p>Alex, take a look at the recent several posts in which people responded so fluently and openly to the OT. It's easy to write about Goldin, but I posted her film (hope you saw it) to encourage us (on this thread) to talk about our own origins...she did that, we can too.</p>

<p>My father was an avid photographer. When he was 18 years old, in 1941, he bought himself a used Exacta VP and began photographing with it. In those days the cheapest prints were contact prints, so his album from that era has a lot of small contact prints in it from that camera. </p>

<p>When I was 3 years old I was in preschool, and my father brought his camera to my school one day to take a photo of my teachers, my mother, and I. For some reason I was holding a toy truck trailer, the kind that would carry cars. When I saw him hold his camera up to his eye to take the photo, I held the trailer up to my face, and used it as a crop tool. It was the first time I ever imagined cropping a scene. So there is a nice photo of my teachers smiling for the camera, along with my mother, also smiling, and this little kid holding a toy truck trailer up to his face and looking through it.</p>

<p>I bought my first camera when I was 5 years old, though I didn't actually take any photos with it until I was 9 years old. The day I bought my first camera (at a garage sale), a Kodak Hawkeye Instamatic, I also bought a Polaroid Swinger. The Polaroid was white and it cost me 50 cents, the Kodak cost me 25 cents. I also bought a Creedence Clearwater Revival album the same day from the same garage sale, and it also cost me 25 cents.</p>

<p>My father shot slides, so we always watched slides together of our vacations. When I first shot 35mm film, I also shot slides. I used my mothers camera, a Canonet GIII QL17. Later on I got a Nikon FE2 for a high school graduation gift and it was all downhill from there...</p>

<p>David, your discovery of "cropping" may refer to one of the essences of photography.<br>

Great Queen Mary photos, btw. A great adventure, even today.</p>