The Aesthetics of Trauma: Nan Goldin’s Photography
This paper explores a psychoanalytic reading of the characteristics of Nan Goldin's photography. Goldin, as one of the most prominent artists in new documentary photos in America, has been highly evaluated by her subjects of love and death in her tribes, who are mostly homo-sexual, drag queens, AIDS patients, and drug addicts. She emphasizes her work as a visual diary of her daily life, and attempts to capture a proper memory of her entourage. Upon the loss of her old sister Barbara at the age of 13, Nan left her family and began to take photographs as a desperate effort to forget her tragic loss. Her sister Barbara's premature death due to her suicide left her an indelible trauma, on which she has perpetually pondered. Trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event. Sigmund Freud theorized it from physical wounds to psychological symptoms, which might be caused by a depressed sexual desire in early ages and repeats unconsciously in dreams and actions. There are debates on its unique characters, which neither be represented, nor properly remembered, nor verbally claimed, nor clearly experienced. However, Michael White and Judith Herman believed that linguistic expressions could help to heal trauma and that making narrative stories about lives could consolidate the role of the subjectivity. Psychoanalytic studies on trauma and its therapy sheds light on Nan Goldin's photographs of her friends with daily routines. The artist might work as the subject of the story telling. However, her photographs lack the context to develop stories, while providing little concrete meanings or messages. Instead, Goldin communicates with the viewer through her feelings to the image. As the narrator, Goldin strengthens herself as the subject of the emotion and it could enhance sympathy between the artist and the viewer.