She sticks to the rules she established: to steal the intimacy of others through a photograph.

It is impossible to talk about representation of the self and of others without thinking of Nan Goldin.

This Boston artist started taking photos in the 1970s of drag queens, when they were still a non-welcomed phenomenon. From the beginning, Goldin attempted to represent drag queens as models of human representation — a little outside of the norm, but still beautiful. Here, the plastic representation of the other is made object of desire.

Afterwards, Nan Goldin photographed her friends in their beds — usually after they had made love, as though she was stealing the representation of love in their most prudish moment, the moment when it least needs representation.

And this prudishness feels, in fact, poetic, the best possible representation of love.

In all of these representations of others — drag queens or friends, Goldin photographs different people who are always beautiful at the moment in which the photo is taken. But she also photographs herself alone. Always alone, like trying to better represent solitude.

When Nan Goldin meets someone, she photographs them.

She sticks to the rules she established: to steal the intimacy of others through a photograph. She captures her images in strange moments: after sex, when the man smokes, satiated. And when the woman (Goldin) would like the attention, the affection.

She needs to be reassured that she isn’t there to only serve the desire of the man.

Ultimately, the man who arrived, got satisfied, and smoked, he beats her. And when she photographs herself, she represents the result of that love story: her marked face.

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