After watching the documentary on Nan Goldin and Daido Moriyama, I found myself particularly interested in the similarities between the two photographers. Both Goldin and Moriyama don’t take particularly pretty pictures, but both had fairly radical subject matter for their time. Goldin in particular had a revolutionary portfolio that consisted of pictures that were completely sexually honest. That’s not to say Moriyama didn’t also reject mainstream aesthetic sensibilities with his experimental black and white pictures. In fact I felt myself very drawn to the way both photographers ignored the canonical rules (I doubt either of them used the zone system), and instead took real honest pictures of what surrounds them, in the vein of Cartier-Bresson, Frank, and Walker Evans.
My issues with the documentary were fairly limited. I wish it could have been a bit longer for each photographer, and I wish I could have seen archival footage of either artist at work, (such as in the Sally Mann documentary). I also wish we could have seen any image of Nan Goldin actually speaking, because just watching the images with a voice over was a bit like a slide show. I find it much easier to empathize with eyes and a face rather than with just a voice. On the other hand, I appreciated that they showed images of Moriyama actually working. It was sort of amusing to see this famous photographer as an old man who, everyday, goes out, gets drunk, and then takes photographs. Obviously it doesn’t present the other side of being a famous photographer, i.e. lectures, shows, and meetings with dealers. However, what the documentary presents is the meat and potatoes of photography, that is, the actual act of taking pictures. Even in Goldin’s segment, the way her work is presented forces the viewer to judge it at face value.
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