Art

If a still image can speak, it will tell you stories that will capture your imagination. It can describe how the photographer feels when taking the shot it can also explain the emotions by the subjects to which the photograph has been taken, what the ambience of the location was and what the main feelings are during the poses. Even if the subject of the picture is not a living thing, that subject can be brought to life by the amazing shot captured by the master photographer. Composition and lighting have also contributed to the message the image wants us to understand. But then again still images cannot speak...

Which leaves us the viewers create our own perception on what might the photo means. This has led to often wrong conclusions for those uninitiated by what the art offers. An image after being viewed can have different meanings, from different people some are quite far from the truth and others almost grasping it. The one, who really knows it and even feels the work, is the person at the back of the lens.

The aim of this essay is discuss the fundamentals of photography and look into the application of the human body as a subject of a portrait. This study will also discuss the background of two known women photographers that contributed to the amazing world of photography. We will also include analyzing their individual approach in taking images and try to compare them.

Nan Goldin
One artist who really understands and definitely has passion for her work is Nancy Goldin, popularly known as Nan Goldin she is an epitome of an artist who works at the most intimate level her life is her work and her work, her life. It is nearly impossible to talk about Goldins photographs without referring to their subjects by name, as though the people pictured were ones own family and friends. It is this intimate and raw style for which Goldin has become internationally renowned. Her snapshot-esque images of her friends -- drag queens, drug addicts, lovers and family -- are intense, searing portraits that, together, make a document of Goldins life (Anon 2002).

Sally Mann
Another interesting female artist is Sally Mann.  She is known for beautiful and intriguing photographs taken mostly in Black and white. She took pictures with a damaged lens, and a camera that required her to use her hand as a shutter (Natalia 2010). She used an older camera, and a broken lens. Her photographs have distinct imperfections, such as scratches and nicks that showed of her style (same as Natalia 2010).She also became well-known for the controversial photographs of her three children, Jessie, Emmet, and Virginia (Cox 2009).

Photography
Our culture places great importance on the imaginative art of the past, it is sometimes forgotten that one of the most common uses for visual depictions in the centuries before photography  was to copy the observable world and  to communicate visual information in an uninflected manner (Marien 2006). Photography is the process of recording images on sensitized material by the action of light (Collins English Dictionary 2003).
Photography using the camera was introduced to the world during the first decades of the nineteenth century, and it has been able to capture more detail and information than traditional mediums, such as painting and sculpting (Witt, Brown, Dunbar, Tirro, Witt, and Cell 2006). The basic ingredients of photography which is composed of a light-tight box, lenses and light-sensitive substances had been known for hundreds of years before they were combined (same as Marien 2006). There are a lot of usage for photography besides capturing details of specified image, it has, and still being used as a medium to record significant events, portray different lives of people, convey socio-political messages, can also be treated as a diary of the photographer, to capture historical monuments and even used at times for medical purposes. There are a lot of processes that can be applied once an image is captured two of those are images in black and white or monochrome and those with Color. This is dependent on the style of the artist in which process she preferred more.

Human Body as Subject of Photography
Since the late 1980s, an extraordinary number of photographic practices and critical texts have taken the human body as their central subject (Wells 2004). Representations of the human body have become a central part of photographic practice and consequent critical discussion since the 1980s. Numerous issues have driven this  body politics, feminist challenges to the representation of the female body, the AIDS crisis, censorship struggles and the foregrounding of issues around gender and sexuality (Hugh 2009).The words Physiognomy and Phrenology were employed from the mid 19th century onwards as a means of classifying people according to social and racial types, with photography acting as the key enabler of this (same as Hugh 2009). Photography can be used as a way of explaining why we take visual pleasure in looking at pictures of certain things. We have many unconscious fetishes that we use to ward off various fears and anxieties (same as Wells 2004).

Women behind the Lens
Nan Goldins Works
A documentation and reinterpretation of intimate moments between her friends and those she has chosen as her replacement family was basically Goldins early works. During this time she embarked on an enormous portrait of her life, making hundreds of color transparencies of herself and her friends lying or sitting in bed, engaged in sexual play, recovering from physical violence against them, or injecting themselves with drugs (Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. 1994-2008)

Its just not about the picture Nan Goldin takes, but on how she uses those pictures to create a story and provide is viewers a glimpse of her reality. Her photographs are her lifes records capturing every moment represented on her world. During the 80s she set herself on moving to New York, living in a loft on the Bowery, she immersed herself n that citys underground club and music scene (Garratt 2002). Goldin documented everything drunken parties, relationships good and bad, evidence of beatings, all of which created an intense portrait of a close-knit group of friends only a few galleries at that time ever showed photography, and Nan had modest expectation of earning her bread from her art. She lived cheaply and earned money working in a bar, exhibiting her pictures in underground venues as slide shows set to music (same as Garratt 2002).One of her, if not the most legendary work which was first shown in the clubs of New Yorks artistic society,  is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1979-2001). In this Goldins work, she has explained in her introduction the problem of bridging the gender divide, when both male and female are incapable of unconditional love and honest communication (Goldin, Heiferman, Holborn, and Fletcher 1986). It is an illustrative diary chronicling the hardships for intimacy and comprehension between friends and lovers collectively described by Nan Goldin as her tribe.(Koriin n.d.) Pivotal to this piece of work was her own destructive and dependent relationship with a man named Brian(Art Institute Chicago 2006).Photos of Brian shows a character straight out of central casting, the perfect shuffle-footed prison drama junkie punk (Gottschalk 1996). It was also known that Brian would eventually beat her so bad that ended up leaving him (same as Gottschalk 1996).

During the years from 1986 to 1988, Goldin described that those were one of the darkest years in her life, after being nearly battered to death in a hotel room in Berlin by his former lover Brian in which she needed  major surgery in her left eye (same as Gottschalk 1996). She barely took any pictures during that time  and ended up isolated in the Bower loft she lived in with another cruel and sadistic  man, in which she also stated that he was not her lover but a fellow comrade  in drugs who makes her life more miserable (same as Gottschalk 1996). By 1988, Goldins drug and alcohol abuse had begun to take a toll on her life and work, and she entered a detoxification clinic. Though she had previously experimented with self-portraiture, it was in this clinic that she created many images of herself. Photographs such as My Bedroom at the Lodge, Self-portrait in front of clinic, and Self-portrait with milagro reveal an introspective Goldin, somewhat humbled by her experiences at the hospital (same as Anon 2002).

It was not just the detoxification clinic that have changed Nans focus, it was also the moment that here friends were struggling with their battle of an infamous disease AIDS. Perhaps most important of these friends was Cookie Mueller, a friend since 1976, the year in which Goldin started photographing her. Goldins series, entitled The Cookie Portfolio, is comprised of 15 portraits of Cookie, ranging from those taken at the parties of their youth to those from Cookies funeral in 1989 (The Art Institute of Chicago 2006). During the next few years, Goldin continued to photograph her slowly dwindling circle of friends, many of whom were afflicted with AIDS ( same as Anon 2002). She showed these photographs in many group exhibitions across the country and around the world and spent a year in Berlin on a DAAD grant, sponsored by a German organization that brings artists to Berlin ( Art Directory n.d.).  Her photographs now are focused on investigating issues of Drug addiction and recovery, the effects of AIDS, and the reconstruction of personal identity and community (Naggar 1992).

Sally Manns Works
Sally Mann often sketches out her ideas for photographs before shooting. This leads her viewers to presuppose that Mann considers the symbolism of her work, adding depth to each image. Mann also prefers to work with antique black and white film cameras because she values the imperfections that are inherent in older photography methods. Each photograph Mann takes has a character and an approach that is distinctly Sally Mann (same as Cox 2002).

The Collection Immediate Family was composed of images taken from 1984 to 1991 detailed the complex childhoods of her three children Emmet, Jessie and the youngest, Virginia (Osbourne 2006). Sally Manns first picture of any of her children was inspired when her daughter came home from a friends house covered in gnat bites, giving her a swollen face (Woodward 2007). It was called The Damaged Child. It became an obsession for Mann, when she realized that she had perfect subjects to photograph living in her own house (same as Cox 2002). It was a disturbing image for the public as it was perceived by them that the child in the picture may actually have been abused (same as Woodward 2007).

Another Black and white image of a young boy holding what it seemed to be skinned squirrels in her photograph entitled Squirrel Season. It is an interesting contrast for a child to hold corpses. Children relate to death in different ways that adults do, because often the concept is strange to them. The idea captures their imagination but it is likely that the concept is not quite as terrifying because many young children are not aware of their own mortality (same as Cox 2002).As Sally Mann, continues on her thought provoking images of her children another work came up The Wet Bed, the expressive vulnerability of Manns toddler daughter asleep in The Wet Bed conjures an image of a specific compounding of the unrestrained, responsive physiological body with the presence of the child as a sovereign being, as Life. (Moul n.d.) It again raised controversy as it has conveyed the message of child pornography (Osbourn 2006). The controversy that Immediate Family stirred up is a direct reflection of the times in which it was produced, and says more about the adult viewer than of the child subject. Sally Mann chooses to explore the concept of childhood and growing up using a variety of the sensual, reality and the fantastic all through a maternal eye.(same as Osbourn 2006).

Mann shifted her camera away from her children  and has undertaken  a different kind of project.Manns initial project dealing with themes of mortality and decay began with the death of her pet dog Eva, whom she photographed in various stages of decomposition. After photographing Eva, Mann began several other projects that hinged on topics of mortality. Her work led her to accompany New York Times reporter Kathy Ryan on a tour of the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Facility where the decomposition of human bodies is studied, and to photographically document the stages of decay of human bodies. Manns new work, which is collected in a five part project called What Remains, is a gritty meditation on the mechanics and aesthetics of mortality (Museum of Contemporary Photography 2010).

Compare and Contrast
Both Goldin and Manns inspiration for their photographs has always come from their surroundings. They mutually capture both spontaneous portraits and at times orchestrate pre-planned sittings. They also both love to explore the boundaries of what is and what is not acceptable when it comes to portraying their work of art. They both chronicle the lives of their own families and its particular stages. Using the human body they have created controversial images that have raised eyebrows of majority of the public, portraying nude human bodies on majority of their photographs. They also at one point photographed human bodies in state of suffering, Nan Goldins dying friend from AIDS, and Sally Manns husband suffering from muscle dystrophy on her image entitled Hephaestus (same as Museum of Contemporary Photography 2010).

In contrast, although the two ladies behind the lens both apply the human bodies as subject of their work, their style and process are quite different. Starting from the developed images, Nan Goldin usually likes to apply color to enhance the images structure, while Mann preferred monochrome photography or black and white more often on her photos because she values the imperfections that are inherent in older photography methods (same as Cox 2009). Both may have different results depending on the viewer, but on these artists their work resembles its own meaning. Nan Goldin during her early works may have conveyed the message of the human body going through different levels of pleasure and excitement, from drugs, sex and the emotions from music which are essentially real. Sally Mann, on the other hand using the frail bodies of her kids is trying to show us the sensuous and sometimes disturbing side of childhood (same as Osbourn 2006), but of which only tells a story of fiction and not really what majority of the viewers perceived as offensive. Nan based on her works, doesnt really intend to shock her audience, she just wants to show her reality, but on Sally, she seemed to be oblivious to the controversy in her photographs and really wants to incite strong reactions from her viewers.

Synopsis
Pornography and Art can be confusing to a lot of us, especially if images we see can be interpreted by our own understanding. Nan Goldin and Sally Mann may have been two of the most controversial photographers in the photography industry. Both created provocative images depicting the human body in different forms that caused quite an outrage in the public eyes. For Nan Goldin, she is just basically telling a story of the stages on her life and her photos portray those moments captured, may it be offensive to some but for her it was real and it happened at some point in time in her life. For Sally Mann, she captured images which may have been extremely interesting and intriguing probably to test the perception of the majority, but for her a lot of her images convey fictions, her subjects playing out an act to disrupt viewers notions on borderline reality. In the end Nan Goldin said it best Perversity is in the eye of the beholder. Children are born without a fear of sexuality or a fear of their own bodies. That fear is imposed on them. Children are sensual beings, they touch and they like to be touched. Its the adult who sometimes takes advantage of this situation.

Its not about what the children in an image are doing and theres nothing sick about a nude child. Its so ridiculous we treat this as a problem in society. Its one of the joys of life, the human body (2008).