A PASSIONATE TOUR OF NAN GOLDIN The ballad of sexual dependency - NGA
It was such pleasure having a tour of this ground breaking show with passionate curator Anne O’Hehir in Canberra last week. Nan Goldin is one of the world’s most influential photographers and her iconic series of 126 photographs The ballad of sexual dependency is a defining artwork of the 1980s. The National Gallery recently acquired the last, complete edition of this cornerstone work, which will be shown at the Gallery from 8 July.
The ballad of sexual dependency which is absolutely mesmerising, taking you to a time and place full of love, loss and yearning and seemingly innocence within all the chaos of the 1980’s New York underground scene. The body of work connects you to a cast of many subjects, her chosen family and Tribe that Nan documented in all their vulnerability, beauty and mediocrity, an extremely intimate exploration of this community making love, taking drugs, building connections, challenging the status quo, a story that often goes untold. The gravitas of the work is made more poignant knowing that many of these people died in the AIDS epidemic and drugs.
Bellow is the full POPSART interview with Anne O’Hehir NGA curator of photography transcribed or watch our tour here.
BEC MAC: How are you?
O’HEHIR: I'm really good, a bit less nervous than I was a little while ago, but I'm coming down so I’ll do my best for you.
BEC MAC: Anne I completely trust you, I know you're very connected to the work….
O’HEHIR: Seventy three hours later, I'm still like “She's still in kindergarten,” but we'll try to keep moving along.
BEC MAC: Now this work is so exciting for the Gallery because the galleries purchased 126 images that make up this seminal exhibition, why is this such a ground-breaking body of work?
O’HEHIR: It's Made In the late 70s and early 80s in New York which was an extraordinary time, I always love to think that Nan got to New York at the same time as Madonna, that early really grungy, fun, radical Madonna and she (Nan) is very openly bisexual, she comes from Boston, and she just starts building Community. It's what Nan does it's just part of her DNA, she doesn't even have to try, so people sort of say “Oh Nan’s been here for two weeks, and she knows 100 times more people than we know and she's introducing us all.” So she builds this wonderful Community, it's all full of the artists and musicians, it's super grungy, super cool, they're all taking lots of drugs, it's a part of the scene, it's an amazing scene and she starts showing these images as a slideshow and so the people in the photographs are also in the audience, they're yelling out what they love, it must have started about 3 A.M or something like incredibly fun and it's this community. I'll just say straight out, it builds into this thing that becomes The ballad of sexual dependency over time and over a long time, she knows what's working just through showing the work to everyone, she's seeing the images that people are getting excited about, so it's really paired down, it's the best of the best that gets down to this set of images that we have in this set of Cibachromes at the gallery.
People say what's your favourite and I'm like every one of them, like every one of them! There were other people documenting the scene and so on, but they don't do what Nan does. Nan sort of brings this drive, she's had this trauma, as a young girl her older sister Barbara has committed suicide when Nan is 11 and Barbara is 18 and it's as Nan believes purely because of the restrictions and the horribleness of post-war America the way that you need to conform, the way that you have to be a certain way that women particularly have to be a certain way. So Nan picks up a camera as a teenager and finds her voice again. She says it saves her life, so if you have a camera, a way of photographing, you're saying that saved my life, there is nothing like that, that gives the work an incredible intensity an incredible drive. I don't think there's anything else quite like it because you know when it comes out of that need it's sort of weird but it's also really powerful.
Nan Goldin, Edwidge behind the bar at Evelyne’s, New York City, 1985 from the series The ballad of sexual dependency, 1973-86, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 2021 in celebration of the National Gallery of Australia's 40th anniversary, 2022 © Nan Goldin
BEC MAC: Yes, there is such an urgency but also it seems like there's a really deep relationship to the community that she's photographing they are like collaborators to a degree would you say?
O’HEHIR: No, I wouldn't say to a degree I would say completely!
BEC MAC: Okay!!
O’HEHIR: I would say she's had this big Drag Queen community in Boston when she's a teenager and she said to them I want to get you girls on the front cover of Vogue and I want you to look as beautiful you I want you to see yourself as beautiful as I do, it's a gift.
BEC MAC: She’s so ahead of a time….
O’HEHIR: So ahead of a time, so ahead of a time! She wants the people in these images that she takes (she's really into film) to be seen as - these are the stars or superstars of my own my own life, but she also wants you to see them as ordinary. By the time in ‘86 when this becomes the great photo book, everyone should go and buy it it's an amazing thing and these images are made these prints are made, this is a community that's being decimated by HIV AIDS. In New York alone in ‘86 I think over two and a half thousand people are dying in New York alone, so this is a community that's being vilified and the government wants these people to just disappear. They want them just to go to hospital and to die for them to disappear you know to vanish!
BEC MAC: And this is relevantly recently that this was going on.
O’HEHIR: Yes, this this body of work is as relevant today as it was then. You know as conservatism takes over the world it's more important than ever. It's a body of work that's about the importance of friendship and I always think of Nina Simone, you know music's very important film and film memories are very important to Nan you know and that great Nina Simone line from Mississippi Goddam and she's like “You don't have to live next to me but give me my equality.” Give us our equality, so it's like respect us, you don't have to be friends you don't have to be my best friend, it's a very simple idea. But we can see these people as ordinary and extraordinary, it’s just such a powerful, powerful, powerful radical message.
BEC MAC: As you're saying, this was her chosen family, it was a tribe it was it was a group that she resonated with, collaborated with, have that creative life force with and the work isn't just about sex and drugs and rock and roll, that’s in there, but what do you think she's truly trying to reveal to us?
O’HEHIR: Well that we're just all human and we just do stuff, we do dirty stuff, we fall in and out of love, we have bad relationship, good relationships, a lot of people see this as a very sort of dark sort of series or something. I think it's far from that, She (Nan) says “Like the pain's in there, the breakups are in there Suzanne crying is in there, you know everybody you know breaks up, a photo of me a month after my boyfriend you know assaulted me is in there because you know we're not going to be silenced you know”. She says “The wrong things are kept hidden.” It's a very political series in that way, not in a polemic or sort of like boring way in a genuine real political and complex way. It's not about the people, she would never judge a person, but it's about society, she really gets stuck into that, about this sort of world that's been created for people to live in.
You know her parents are in the series, it starts with them, and you can see her mums sitting like this (O’Haire clenches her hands together tightly) I can't even do it, you see the anxiety and what she's gone through this woman who suffered terribly. Like a lot of people would just break relationships with their parents at that point , she's felt betrayed by them (her parents) in some ways but not Nan, her whole life she stays that kid, she keeps those relationships, and she has just huge love and empathy. You think oh that's a bit cliche but there's nothing sentimental about this series there's something tough in Nan tough, tough, tough you know she's survived! She survived losing Barbara and then she survived losing most of her friends, and she survived it and as she's still building Community this community went and so then she got really upset about the opioid thing in America and she built another Community.
Nan Goldin, Nan and Brian in bed, New York City, 1983 from the series The ballad of sexual dependency, 1973-86, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 2021 in celebration of the National Gallery of Australia's 40th anniversary, 2022 © Nan Goldin
BEC MAC: She is phenomenal! As you're saying it's about identity, it's about culture but has anyone done it this way before, around the documentation of your relationship and potentially love in all its gritty wild fabulous points?
O’HEHIR: I don't think so, historically when you look at where there is intimacy in photos or “supposed intimacy” probably the trust that's in this series isn't there. It's the men photographing their girlfriends or their wives it's Alfred Stieglitz photographing Georgia O'Keefe, it's Edward Western photographing Charis Wilson that's the history of where this sort is and it isn't as close, it's like still a bit pervious because it blokes you know. So she looks back to Larry Clap, do you know Tulsa the famous series that comes out of his trauma of the Vietnam War? He goes back to Oklahoma to his hometown and it’s a very insider story so that you know Larry Clap becomes a very famous filmmaker with teenagers and Chloe and all that sort of stuff, but it’s an early series it's in black and white. Nan's sort of a bit ahead of the curve in her way of using colour, she says she sees in colour, and she doesn't see very well, I love that idea that she makes you see the world the way that she actually sees not even though the camera see she makes the camera see the way she sees.
BEC MAC: What a great artist, I love it and the colours like the reds, the black, the hot pink all in deep cibachrome tones, the smoke like there's so much smoking going on here.
O’HEHIR: She wants you to smell the photographs, you might smell the cigarettes gosh there's lots of cigarettes.
BEC MAC: No vaping in these photos!
O’HEHIR: And the nudity and the people having sex and stuff its not titillating at all is it?
BEC MAC: No it's not conventionally sexy, it's gritty sexy but in a good way.
O’HEHIR: It’s sexy, it's very sexy I think in that way that you look at people and you're like oh I really fancy them and that's what comes through, they're beautiful and she she's reading some of the male gays blah blah blah blah feminist Theory blah blah blah blah all that stuff in reverse, seeing the gays and becoming the one who looks, it's a bit pervy but it's also very collaborative so it's fine.
BEC MAC: It’s almost erotic and sensual…
O’HEHIR: yeah, yeah in any way it's certainly not pornography or anything but she's interested in sex
BEC MAC: Sex is life!
O’HEHIR: Sex is life! So she thinks we don't talk about these things, when things started to get violent with her boyfriend everyone backed off, even in her community everyone's like oh that's Nan and Brian's business and so that's where it ended up an image of her having been hugely assaulted, you know and then people come in and their friends come and helped. But if you keep things hidden, like Barbara her sister who they were always trying to control, then the sister dies, it’s like let's hide the fact that she's unwell, “ What will the neighbours think” she says in the forward (of the Book) is what my parents were always saying and this all ends in Nan's life as just devastation.
BEC MAC: Her lived experience is the hidden pain and suffering but also humanity creates disaster if you don’t confront it?
O’HEHIR: Yeah if you hide it, and so there is stuff in this body of work that people might find confronting but she puts it all in there.
BEC MAC: That's why she's doing it….
O’HEHIR: That's why she's doing it, its not I'll put it in because more people will come if there's nudity or something, she puts it in because it's part of life and it's just a normal part of life and if you hide it and you suppress it, the surrealist new, it comes out in weird ways and it comes out in violence often.
Cookie Muller and Vitoria at their wedding photographed by Nan Goldin
BEC MAC: Just talking about the people that are part of this exploration I know you have a couple of favourites but I am a bit obsessed by Cookie Mueller and the tragedy of the love…
O’HEHIR: There is no person cooler ever, ever, ever then Cookie Muller, you know in the John Waters films and again like they're up in Provincetown and Nan wants to meet Cookie and she's like I'll use the camera so she gets in there and builds her friendship with Cookie by photographing that’s how she builds connections, and then Cookies and Nan are very, very, very close but that sort of queerness is all the way through the ballad. As well like Greg Langton her wonderful transgender friend is in the very first photo so already it's starting to be complicated and I love the fact too that there's stories in here that you know because of Cookie because she's so cool but most people in the ballad you only know because of Nan they're just friends with Nan but you don't know those backstories you suspect them.
BEC MAC: But as a viewer you want to know them, you want to know more and you start building your own stories.
O’HEHIR: The community knows them, it's a gift to the community and it's gone broader then that and you can still love the photographs. Cookie was with Sharon Napes for years they were long-term couple and that beautiful son and the beautiful image of Cookie with Max her son. She puts kids in because you know 1986 it's like the headlines (Newspaper) are Gays Kills Babies you know they're vilified, they're scary.
BEC MAC: They are dehumanized.
O’HEHIR: Yes, dehumanized and she's like we get married, we have babies, and we hang out and we get bored and we're fantastic we're also really ordinary as I said it's a really sort of simple story that's why the kids are in it. I think she loves kids she had a whole body of work later just about kids, I think she's really interested in identities and her own childhood obviously that's such a big part of her life. I think every exhibition she's ever done is devoted to well Greer or Cookie or Barbara you know they're these people that she's lost, and she says the really moving things “You know I photograph people to keep them close and I've just realized how much I've lost. Three years after this ballad and look how vibrant Cookie looks in these images.
BEC MAC: I love cookie she's so beautiful and so rock and roll you know, it's like this whole other edgy aesthetic and fashion and idea of what beauty is.
O’HEHIR: So this book comes out in ‘86 and it sort of gets codified in a way and then Nan sort of goes dark and then she gets back to Boston and gets herself cleaned up people say to her “How can you be killing yourself on booze and drugs now and when all your friends are dying from HIV AIDS” and she's like “Yeah you're right, you're right” she gets it, she's like it was a wake-up call and she goes back to David Armstrong one of her earliest friends and she gets cleaned up. Then she gets back to New York in ‘89 and Cookies dying of HIV AIDS. Vittorio who she's marrying here, and everyone would have gone like oh my God cookies getting married to a man…. oh okay!
BEC MAC: But what a great wedding dress!
O’HEHIR: Oh I know I know, so cool by ‘89 Vittorio has died and Nan comes back and she curates the first show on HIV AIDS in a public museum at the Art Space which gets all this controversy but you know it's an amazing thing like we will not vanish it's called Witnesses Against Others.
BEC MAC: It's so activist, she is really taking it on politically like she's shifting the idea of what artists can be and do?
O’HEHIR: The activism is the thread of Nan's life and now with the Sackler stuff, it just goes all the way through and that's why it's not voyeuristic, that's why it comes from this incredible place of care and love and empathy, it's true it's not just some sort of thing she says with a camera it's like it's the truth of this, of this body of work it's why it's still so loved.
BEC MAC: What do you think the Australian public in 2023 how would they relate to this work from the 1980s in New York?
O’HEHIR: Well it's going to be very cool, people will come and look, it will take them back to their own20s.
BEC MAC: Todays kids would go oh my God look at all the fun we missed out on in our screen universe!
O’HEHIR: I know it is I mean even by ‘86 she knows it’s over she said, “I didn’t photograph for the future I photographed to remember and in the present and so I was just photographing my life.” But even by ‘86 she knows this world is going, the Bowery is being gentrified everybody's dying and she's growing up. So, she draws a line, she gets cleaned up she moves to Europe, it's of a time that's already passing.
BEC MAC: And a precious time because I think that's before the impact of AIDS is really understood and there was such an innocence and a naivety and everything seemed possible and nothing's ever been the same again.
O’HEHIR: I think it is of a time and we sort of have that yearning for that time and I don't think yeah, we'll ever get back to that time again.
Nan Goldin New Collection
8 Jul 2023 – 28 Jan 2024
