Si Chartsy como no!

“Diarios Públicos”.

Nan Goldin comenzó retratando la escena post-punk new-wave y la subcultura Stonewall Gay a final de los setentas y los tempranos ochentas en Nueva York, donde la mayoría (si no es que todos), eran amigos suyos o conocidos, con escenas brutales, exhibe lo que es el mundo de las drogas, el supuesto glamour de la homosexualidad y la evidente ignorancia frente al boom del VIH y Sida. 

“My art was the diary of my life.  I photographed the people around me.  I didn’t think of them as people with AIDS.  About ’85, I realized that many of the people around me were positive.  David Armstrong took an incredible picture of Kevin, his lover at the time, right before Kevin went into the hospital.  I photographed him when he was healthy.  At that stage, we still didn’t know very much.  There was a lot of ignorance.  We were very obsessed with what caused it:  There were all kinds of rumors, everything from amyl nitrate to bacon.  People were tested and being told they had something called ARC, that quickly became medically non-relevant.  I was in denial that people were going to die.  I thought people could beat it.  And then people started dying.

One of the ways I started becoming involved was through artist and activist Avram Finkelstein in ’86, ’87.  I’d become friends again with him, having known him when I was 18 and living with the drag queens in Boston in the early ’70s.  He was in art school then.  In the 1980s he became my hairdresser up at Sassoon.  He had helped start the Silence Equals Death Collective, which turned into Act Up.  He was one of the people who designed the logo Silence = Death, and the triangle.”

Nan Goldin. 

“La Gente Educada no ve las cosas feas… pues encuentra belleza en todo…”

Contemplando esta frase y reflexionandola, Nan Goldin es una persona educada, es brutal ver el proceso de debilitamiento físico, anémico y emocional de todos tus amigos, los que alguna vez fueron fuertes, llenos de vida, de amor por la vida, con ganas de expresarse, de expresar su sexualidad y retratarlo de una manera no condescendiente sino bella, cálida y reflexiva, ahí la “educación”, hacernos voltear a ver lo que en principio es sufrible.

Se le ha acusado de provocadora, de solapar la adicción a la heroína, de solapar la ignorancia, etcétera, eso es sólo verla por la superficie. Hay una especie de cinematografía inexpresable en su trabajo que es digna de revisión por todos los que intentemos estár conscientes de la belleza del mundo. No he hablado lo suficiente, ni intentaré hablar más sobre NG, prefiero se tomen el tiempo de apreciarla y tomar en cuenta el contexto histórico de ésta fotógrafa, sobre todo hoy en día que está de moda el tan usado snapshot, la fiesta, la juventud y la decadencia. Aquí hay eso, pero con Huevos.

Charls