Nan Goldin’s The Other Side: Creating A Gender-Free Space for a Queer Futurity

Abstract

For almost five decades Nan Goldin has consistently created very intimate narratives through snapshot photography and has been able to not only question conventional formal notions of fine art, but at the same time managed to challenge seemingly fixed traditions of gender perception. Thus, Goldin has been a pioneer spokesperson for the queer community and particularly for the trans and drag movements, in a time in which gendercrossers were completely ostracized, even within the gay community.
The following paper will take a closer look at the art of drag and its relevance to the deconstruction of gender norms and the building of queer memory – two ideas present throughout Nan Goldin’s entire photographic catalogue and especially in her 1993 album The Other Side. Although The Other Side features various forms of gender-crossing individuals, I will primarily focus on photographs depicting drag performers, due to the fact that they constitute gender subversion in its most parodic form. It will be argued that Goldin has been able to humanize the queer community and to construct a space for gender nonconformists through the creation of a visual discourse of counter-memory that bears a strong subversive power.