A Quote by Nan Goldin
I was recently interviewed for radio in relation to the "Thanksgiving" show [2001] at the Saatchi gallery that I was part of. The interviewer said that people in London were very disturbed that I showed a picture of myself battered ("Nan One Month after Being Battered", 1984) and they thought that I set it up. I was accused of deliberately putting on a wig for that particular picture.
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I found myself being more and more involved with people who were rejected by society - with drug addicts, alcoholism, battered this, battered that - and I found an affinity there.
When you've been battered down and battered down and battered down, your spirit gets broken.
Because I don't do stand-up, radio has always been my equivalent, a place to stay in connection with the public and force myself to write every week and come up with new characters. Plus it's a medium that – having grown up with it and putting myself to sleep with a radio under my pillow [as a kid] – I love. No matter what picture you want to create in the listener's mind, a few minutes of work gets it done.
However, I must stress that my own interest is immediate and in the picture. What I am conscious of and what I feel is the picture I am making, the relation of that picture to others I have made and, more generally, its relation to others I have experienced.
March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month. Don't feel bad if you did not know that. I didn't, either, until someone recently slapped a picture of a green ribbon and a message wishing me a 'Happy CP Awareness Month' on my Facebook page. I always thought March was Women's History Month.
I don't see myself as a movie maker only. When I can do a picture, I do. But I don't work like a business, in pictures. I am not obliged to make one picture after the other in order to live. I write books, I write for comic books, I give lectures... I live. And when the opportunity comes to do a picture, I do a picture.
One time a guy handed me a picture. He said, 'Here's a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is of you when you were younger. 'Here's a picture of me when I'm older.' 'You son of bit, how'd you pull that off Let me see that camera. What's it look like'
Sometimes I've been more emotionally disturbed by the experience of shooting a comedy than a drama. After 'We're the Millers', I think playing this battered loser who's confidence was at zero for 90 percent of the movie, I did genuinely feel that way.
A photograph records both the thing in front of the camera and the conditions of its making... A photograph is also a document of the state of mind of the photographer. And if you were to extend the idea of the set-up photograph beyond just physically setting up the picture, I would argue that the photographer wills the picture into being.
They showed this one beautiful picture of me recently and they had all the things that I had done. I thought it was a great compliment for everybody to think I've had plastic surgery.
I really approached the film as if it was a white big piece of paper and I was going to draw a picture on it. And whether that picture was good or bad, whatever people thought of it, what they could never take away was that it was my picture.
There was a moment in time when we were filming in London, and we thought someone stole one of the queen's wigs. But I think someone had just misplaced it. It was so funny. I remember it being the most panicked day on set. 'We're missing a wig!'
Exotic novelty. My statement to [people] is always, well, set this picture in your home town, is it still an interesting picture? Or is it just exotic? Would I care about this same picture minus its exoticism?
I feel I'm such a big part of that insecurity that some girls might have because of my job, that girls think they have to be that picture. And even boys, they think that that picture exists, and it's so frustrating because I don't look like that picture - I wake up not looking like that picture.
And I had known Peter O'Toole before in London. And I'd liked him very much. And the thought of being in a picture with him was very challenging to me. And he was playing the starring role.
Each picture with its particular environment and unique personal relationships is a world unto itself - separate and distinct. Picture makers lead dozens of lives - a life for each picture. And, by the same token, they perish a little when each picture is finished and that world comes to an end. In this respect it is a melancholy occupation.
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