16 Days of Activism Book List 2024
A book recommendation a day for the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence. Lobby your library to stock these books....
Nan Goldin
Born in Washington D.C in 1953, Nan Goldin first picked up a camera at 15. Having lost her sister to suicide four years earlier, she used photography to bring a feeling of immortality to her relationships.
Nan’s approach to photography continued to place the most value in the subjects of her images and she went on to create works that are candid and deeply personal. In the early decades of her career she created intimate photographs of her friends, many of whom were part of the LGBTQ+ community, in real and raw moments. Unlike many photographers, Nan did not keep herself on the edges of these worlds, as an observer, she immersed herself within the images, including taking many self-portraits.
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Many of these images became a part of her most notable work, ’The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’. Taken between 1979 and 1986, ‘The Ballad…” began as a slideshow which she showed in New York nightclubs but soon progressed to a multimedia presentation with over 700 images and a musical soundtrack. The images range from self-portraits such as, ’Nan one month after being battered’, which depicts Nan, staring directly at the camera, with two black eyes, to images showing her friends getting ready for a night out, their reflection captured in a mirror, as they put on make-up.
Nan Goldin places the emphasis not on creating the perfect image, but in creating an image that is real, capturing any moment she wanted to, no matter the circumstances – “If I want to take a picture, I do not care if there is light or no light. If I want to take a picture, I take it no matter what.” (Foto Tapeta, 2003)
A moment, a person, a memory, forever captured in time.
By Becky Handley
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16 Days of Activism 2023
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A round-up of six brilliant exhibitions to keep an eye on during April 2023, featuring work by leading women in photography....
Anti-Violence Display
Violence against women takes many forms. For the month of February, we have a special display at the Heroines Quarter showing how different artists have tackled this problem through their work....
23rd December
Nan Goldin (b 1953) is an American photographer and activist whose work explores LGBTQ+ subcultures, sexual intimacy, HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Now, a new documentary film, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, directed by...
16 Days of Activism 2022
16 days of activism for the elimination of violence against women...
Chosen Family: Less Alone Together
Published alongside a complementary exhibition (Fotomuseum Winterthur), Chosen Family explores 'family' as a social and cultural construct....
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Our overview of Heroine highlights from the 53rd iteration of the iconic Rencontres d'Arles....
