CHAPTER 5: INTIMATE LIFE:
This form of contemporary photography the
images are subjective to the photographer’s personal environment and daily
interactions and activities, the photographs are comprised of family, close
friends and possibly spouses. This form of photography does not require any
professional skill but they are the special events shared with those close to
you and this could result in images filled with mistakes which might be a
blurred image, finger prints on the lens or a skewed image. However it is with
these mistakes that the artist is able to use the photograph to speak to the
viewer. Nan Goldin’s photographs where what had set the trend for this
type of photography and her work was subjected to the people she had relations
with, her works were expressive and expressed feelings which she felt were
important to her as these works were a record of her personal life. Nobuyoshi
Araki used different camera to take the same image/photographs of the
same subject and his photographs are a journal of his sexual life and desires as
apparently he slept with some of the model which appear in his photographs.
Larry Clark had works which were subjected to the teenage life of
destruction, sex, and drugs. Juergen Teller started off as a
fashion photographer and when he turned to art photography he turned the camera
onto himself, he was in the position of looking at the camera and not looking
through it, making his work maintain a sense of confrontation towards the viewer.
Corinne Day also started out as a fashion photographer then casually
moved onto art photography although here photographs were lacking a sense of
artiness. In her photographs she displays her dysfunctional social
life and they were of moments which were intimate in her life and between her
and her friends which made her photographs emotionally deep narratives. Wolfgang
Tillmans created photographs which built narrative which made them easy to
read. This type of photography allows for a sense of artistic liberation as anything
depicted in the photographs is subjected to how the artist views their subject and their
interactions with their surroundings. The photographs are not only about the
photographer’s and the subjects emotion but they are also are a navigation
through the photographers’ life.
