Questions of Representation

            It was an honor to have the opportunity to present in class on works in the first person, and as a result get to talk about Nan Goldin and subsequently her critique of Diane Arbus’s approach to representation in photography.  I did a lot of thinking about the ways she was critical of Arbus and her “outsider view” of her subjects, and wondered what was truly different about the ways Goldin represented similar populations with the added claim that her subjects were her community.  I absolutely agree with Goldin’s terms of consent, and I know as a result, I am a minority in the program, though I studied the pictures Goldin made of drag queens and the ones that Arbus made, and tried to see if I could capture the discrepancies of  their different approaches as an outsider.  I am very interested in these concepts as a practitioner engaged in creating culture that I feel affinity towards, representing my people as a queer woman and someone engaged in movements for social justice. 

            I believe in work coming from a place of authenticity, telling stories from the inside, exposing stories that are buried, with the consent of those affected by the repercussions of such silences.  I came into this program with a toolkit of experiences and stories, many from people who will age in prison, pass on behind bars, and never be on the radar of society.  I spent the last decade as a community educator, working with underrepresented populations who are erased by culture at large, and unthought of when it comes to decisions being made in this country.  So many black and brown men are rotting away behind bars, and I find myself pulled to tell their stories with them, because who else will?  I have been in correspondence with a former student who is serving a life sentence.  I hold the complications of what he did, and what has been done to him, and how do we tell his story together, especially when I am the gate keeper in this relationship.  I have white privilege and education privilege with the tools to tell his story, and he only sometimes has access to a pen and paper to write me.  It is clear, however, that telling his story will save his life.  I know as I reflect on this story how different it would be if he were a stranger to me, and we didn’t have the trust and history embedded in the relationship to tell make something together.  I know it feels different as a practitioner to tell a story about someone not only with consent, but it turns into our story, not just his. 

            I looked over and over again at Nan Goldin’s pictures of drag queens and then Diane Arbus’.  They were different, though Arbus didn’t have the opportunity to plead her case and talk about her connection to her subjects.  The things I noticed were more distance in Arbus’ work, less intimacy, though I didn’t gather a lack of consent in the images she made in of themselves.  Goldin certainly got closer and was very clear she was not using a lens that zoomed tightly, but was that close to her subjects, implying an intimacy, but would they agree that they shared community in the way she suggested?  I still felt a distance there, upon many looks, I felt a heartbeat missing specifically with her photos of drag queens, even though she suggested that these subjects are her people, what was it that I couldn’t find there?  Her claim is that her genius is not in her images themselves, but in her slideshows, and the way the body of work lives together, so maybe on an individual basis they didn’t read in the same way? 

I went back and looked at the show that has been up at the Center for Documentary Studies, in light of the conversation about representation and drag queens: The Legendary Ballroom Scene by Gerard H. Gaskin, and saw something that was missing from both Arbus’ and Goldin’s work, a true insider making photos of a world that is home for him.  It read differently then the other photographers discussed in this post, like someone taking family photos that just happened to be beautiful; we were transported into his world.  This body of work made me understand how different it is when one photographs from a place of home and authenticity, as it read so differently then the other works highlighting a gender transgressive culture.  This revelation clarified some things about my work, and how I want to continue with the stories that I came here to tell. 

I think there is value in viewing a world from the outside, and making photos and moving image from that perspective, especially if it is consensual, though after really considering the work discussed in this post, I am going to argue that there is a much deeper power that comes from work that is an extension of ones own story.  This in itself is not uncomplicated, as our own people don’t necessarily want to be subjects as a result of their connection to a cultural producer, and therefore this discourse is not black-and-white, but I do believe there is a much deeper power in working from ones own experience and place in the world.