While many would like to categorize Goldin as a documentary photographer--the Whitney itself seems to believe this is a glossy "Day In The Life of Bohemia" project--this work is best appreciated as a subversive family album. Goldin has never tried to be an objective viewer entering someone else's seedy environment. Instead, in an extended project, more akin to performance than photography, Goldin has photographed again and again the friends who make up her self-styled nuclear family.

A wall of her first black-and-white snapshots at the entrance of the exhibition shows Goldin's initial impulse--to play the faux "fashion photographer" to a crowd of associates who were big on glamour, short on funds. Drag queens and extroverts need to play to an audience and Goldin found her role, standing in for a papparazi that was never going to show up, at least not until "Paris Is Burning" became an underground hit.

Goldin continued photographing subjects close at hand, documenting, if anything, her own life. She is pervasively in the images, even when the images are not necessarily one of her many self-portraits. Sometimes, her hand, leg or shadow intrudes--as in Brian Comes [ck title]. But, even without her body in the image, Goldin exposes herself. We are allowed to judge her lovers, her apartment, her experiences.

"The Ballad of Sexual Dependency," a collection of over 700 images presented as a slide show, makes up the heart of the Whitney exhibition and is Goldin at her most effective. It was first shown not in gallery exhibitions or magazines, but in downtown clubs, like CBGB's, adapting a typical suburban rec-room activity--"wanna see slides of our summer vacation?"--for her decidely anti-suburbia circle of friends. Later published as a book, it brought Goldin an audience beyond the New York scene, due to its heart-felt rendering of love and loneliness. In images such as Couple in Bed, Chicago, 1977 or Nan and Brian in bed, NYC, 1983, lovers distance themselves after sex. Heart-shaped bruise, NYC, 1980 is one of the more under-stated images of the brutal side of love, while messy sheets often turn up as a metaphor for post-coital loneliness.

Despite numerous comparisons of this work to the photographs of Diane Arbus, Goldin's images, especially those in the continuing saga of "The Ballad", are clearly not about documenting (or even projecting identification on) "the Other". The bar scenes and bedroom show-downs are genuine and illicit raw reactions; it doesn't matter if the subject happens to be a drug addict, drunk, or drag queen. While some critics have chosen to focus on the life-styles of the subjects to distance themselves from the work, the fact that "The Ballad" has reached audiences across the country demonstrates the extent to which the photographs are about something more than social commentary. (Or perhaps, there are more addicts-in-recovery or victims of domestic unhappiness out there, than some critics know.)

While many artists of this generation, such as Cindy Sherman, turned "identity" into a political issue or aesthetic strategy, Goldin kept on making pictures of her extended family, capturing the transformation of identity over time. We see her subjects, so confident at first that they can re-create themselves--from middle-class kids into bohemians or from working class cast-aways into vogue-stars--merely by striking a pose, ending up confronting the obstacles of AIDS and addiction that cannot be overcome by self-invention. This is especially true of her extended examination of Cookie Mueller, looking most glamourous of all laid out for her burial.

When Goldin moves away from intimate subjects, the work becomes more generic, less moving. Goldin's later work--of prostitutes in Bangkok, Berlin demimonds, and color-drenched landscapes--feel like assignments. Here, the fascination with edgy people and color deteriorates into a device. But, then, her strength re-emerges in recent photographs of her parents and in the empty bedroom scenes.

In contrast to Goldin's oeurvre, most family albums seem achingly empty. We leave out the black sheep, the embarrassments, who have long ago stopped coming to Thanksgiving dinner. But where are the bruised knees, first fights, Caesarian scars and failed marraiges that make up the modern family? There are some who will distance themselves from "I'll Be Your Mirror," by concentrating on the lifestyle of Goldin's subjects. Others will come away less lonely for finding a body of work that includes loneliness as part of the contemporary experience.

Barbara Pollack

The Whitney Museum of American Art encourages artists to use the World Wide Web, a unique interactive medium that fosters creative exploration by artists. However, the Whitney Museum also respects the right of Nan Goldin (who does not want her photographs reproduced online) and other artists to control the presentation and circulation of their own work. Electronic art in cyberspace must not restrain or replace the experience of actually visiting a museum or gallery; rather the Internet should enhance the appreciation and understanding of art by providing a new and broader means of access to images and information. Please visit the Whitney Museum's web-site at (http://www.echonyc.com/~whitney). If you would like to discuss the issue with David A. Ross, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum, please send a message to our site, or e-mail him directly at (daross@worldnet.att.net).