Photorific

It probably would have been more appropriate to post about my Halloween costume today and a book I read last week yesterday, but I'm not always the most appropriate of people. Or at least, I don't always plan ahead. So happy Halloween even though this isn't quite a Halloween-themed post.

Josh recently bought photographer Nan Goldin's book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986). These photos document about ten years in the lives of Goldin and her friends, who mostly happened to be heroin addicts. Goldin calls the work "the diary I let people read," and the photos are all very intimate and personal -- and also engaging and somewhat universal.

I don't have much of a vocabulary for talking about visual art, but I liked this. Shortly after the book was published, Goldin went into rehab, and later established herself as a successful professional photographer. And if Wikipedia is to be believed, Ally Sheedy's character in High Art (which I never actually saw) is supposed to be based on Goldin.