Nan Goldin: The Other Side 1972-1992

by Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin's seminal second book The Other Side is finally back in print. Ever since the early 1970s Goldin has lived with and among drag queens, documenting both their glamour and their struggles. The Other Side is her very personal declaration of love and gratitude to these drag queens, who showed her a way out of the captivity of pre-packaged, socially prescribed identity. As she put it: "The pictures in this book are not of people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender euphoria.... The people in these pictures are truly revolutionary; they are the real winners in the battle of the sexes because they have stepped out of the ring". In contrast to much of the early 90s drag queen mania, The Other Side has brilliantly passed the test of time: Goldin's photographs are as beautiful, moving, and vibrant as ever, heralding the utopian promises of a world where gender has stopped being a prison -- a vision that remains as vital and acute as it was when the book was first published.

Genres: Photography, Art, Queer, Nonfiction, LGBT, Art and Photography, Transgender

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Nan Goldin is an American photographer known for her deeply personal and candid portraiture. Goldin’s intimate images act as a visual autobiography documenting herself and those closest to her, especially in the LGBTQ community and the heroin-addicted subculture. Her opus The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1980–1986) is a 40-minute slideshow of 700 photographs set to music that chronicled her life in New York during the 1980s. The Ballad was first exhibited at the 1985 Whitney Biennial, and was made into a photobook the following year. “For me it is not a detachment to take a picture. It's a way of touching somebody—it's a caress,” she said of the medium. “I think that you can actually give people access to their own soul.”

Born Nancy Goldin on September 12, 1953 in Washington, D.C., the artist began taking photographs as a teenager to cherish her relationships with those she photographed, as well as a political tool to inform the public of issues that were important to her. Influenced both by the fashion photography of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin she saw in magazines, as well as the revelatory portraits of Diane Arbus and August Sander, Goldin captured herself and her friends at their most vulnerable moments, as seen in her seminal photobook Nan Goldin: I’ll Be Your Mirror (1996). In 2018, she collaborated with the clothing brand Supreme by including three of her photographs, Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC (1991), Kim in Rhinestones, Paris (1991), and Nan as a dominatrix, Cambridge, MA (1978) on their spring/summer collection.

The artist currently lives and works between New York, NY, and Paris, France. Today, Goldin’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others.

Reviews

[Imogen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my god, Nan Goldin.

These pictures wake up a part of my heart I must have killed when I was a little kid or something; I wish I could put my finger on why these photos of her variously gendered friends through the years feel so vital and loving and complex, but I'm not sure exactly what it is. It might be as simple as the fact that these are her friends, bumping around and doing stuff, so there's a warmth in their eyes that you don't get in other collections of pictures of trans women, drag queens and queers.

Plus, can we talk about my nostalgia for the early nineties, when I was eleven and first realizing that the world had queers in it?

My Nan Goldin books are at the top of the list of things I'd grab if my house were on fire, right after my girlfriend and my dog.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Goldin's photographs for their rawness, I think, and their intimacy. The Other Side didn't resonate quite as much with me as The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, though I'm not sure whether that's because she didn't have quite the same level of entree into the world of drag that she did into the world of relationships or just that I didn't see relationships develop in the same way through this book.

This is not the flashy, campy setting of RuPaul's Drag Race (which, don't get me wrong, I adore), or the clean, tidy drag of, say, Kinky Boots (which I also adore). It's messier and much more about the behind-the-scenes. This is the 70s and 80s: glamour and grunge and fabulousness and uncertainty and, eventually the AIDS epidemic. I really love that Goldin talks, in the introduction, about not just drag but gender and sexuality, refusing to keep her subjects and friends and lovers in a simple 'nothing but drag' box.

Someday I will have a permanent living space with room for a library (and money to spend on filling that library), and I'll get as many of Goldin's books as I can find to include in that library.

[holden · Rating 5 out of 5]

we have always been here, and we cannot be erased from society no matter how hard you try.

[Sara K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very intimate and a close look at the drag community and the unique people that are a part of it.

[Ray Dunsmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The pictures in this book are not of people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender euphoria. This book is about new possibilities and transcendence. The people in these pictures are truly revolutionary; they are the real winners of the battle of the sexes because they have stepped out of the ring." - Nan Goldin, from her 2019 foreword

And that's what makes this such a revolutionary, necessary book. These are images of trans women, drag queens and genderqueer individuals living their best lives in the face of insurmountable societal opposition that's still ongoing. Many of the subjects of this book didn't live to see its second printing, dead of AIDS or drug overdose, the people society deems acceptable to fall through the cracks living what was so often the only ending deemed worthy to someone of their station. These are artists, queens, sex workers, all depicted as they were in life, candid, vibrant and truly, vividly alive. This is a document of a scene and a generation that was nearly totally lost to time were it not for archives of memory and proof of life like this. Essential queer art/history.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nan Goldin's The Other Side is a collection of beautiful, glossy photos of her friends in the queer community, mostly transgender women, with a heartfelt introduction by the author and a short dialogue between two of the subjects. It is a book about authenticity, survival, beauty and pain, snapshots of a different time, though not so very long ago. There is a beautiful slice of life quality to the photos, emblematic of what has come to be known as the Boston School of photography.

[Odette · Rating 4 out of 5]

net gelezen. veel foto’s, heel erg puur. het is een kijkje in levens. heel persoonlijk. dat maakt Nan heel goed. en een interview, heel open. heel echt. Niet per se een onderwerp waar ik heel erg geïnteresseerd in ben maar dat maakte het juist heel interessant. ik heb het in een keer gelezen want ik zat er in. wel de versie uit 2019 met een nieuw verhaaltje er bij.

[Dylan Kiewel · Rating 3 out of 5]

glanced thru this quickly on my break in powells. appreciated the first half.

[A B · Rating 5 out of 5]

fav forever

[Mari C.L. Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a gorgeous book, containing so much love and euphoria and memory and loss.

[Jennie]

2024 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge #18 - Read a book about drag or queer artistry

[Keeg]

all these glittering ghosts break my heart.

[Á. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This is a book about beauty
and about my love for my friends"
<3

[Kaya]

Recently attended a Nan Goldin book launch and wanted to read some of her previous work beforehand and as a certified Greer Lankton lover this was a joy to read and look through.

[Beth A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nan Goldin has been in the news lately, unfortunately for one risky, innapropriate, but not pornographic shot of two little girls dancing. A funny family photo, maybe not meant for the general public. Anyway, I got several of her books of photography from the library, and her photos, which she considers her living journals, and the accompanying narrative, are rich and evocative and raw. Stunning, nothing out there like it.

Tokyo Love rocks as well. Not for the intolerant.

[Mills College Library]

779.2 G6185o 2019