Lecture 2

Today's guest lecturer was curator John Marchant. He has worked with various artists such as Jamie Reed, Harry Adams, and focused the lecture on photographer Nan Goldin.

• Work emulated on social media
• Photographed controversial images of people in NY and Boston
• Originally photographed family and distributed to friends
• Early 70s
• Friend - David Armstrong
• Put images together in slideshow carousels - night clubs early 80s
• The Ballad of the Sexual Dependent
• Photographed the same people over many years
• Honey on a Razor Blade - on teenage years
• Confrontational, never passive
• Heroin chic
• Often implicitly sexual
• Used slide film instead of digital
• Slideshows shown at the Tate - usually with a great reception from audiences
• Always had a camera on her - always looked for something to shoot
• Highly influential - people asked to replicate her work
• Usually chose images that are slightly unbalanced
• We tend to remember images that are kind of imperfect
• Interest in image even if there's a mistake i.e. lighting or framing
• "Fucking postmodern and gender theory. I mean, who gives a shit? People made all that crap up to get jobs in universities. I once told my students to just take LSD if they wanted to see the world clearly," she says, grinning and lighting another cigarette. "You can see why I didn't really fit in as an academic, but they still ask me to come back and teach."