These honest and intimate depictions of young lovers, prostitutes, and gathered friends form a timeless bond between viewer and subject and reveal the perennial desire to be loved and accepted. Parsons Foundation Photography Collection. Setting his camera upon the nocturnal underworld of Montparnasse, he compassionately captured the inner lives of streetwalkers, criminals, and nightclub patrons.
This trend included a fascination with Josephine Baker, the Charleston, Jazz, and visiting Montparnasse dance halls filled with Sudanese, Guinean, and Senegalese people. This mirthful silver gelatin print showcases several Parisians and Africans laughing, cavorting, embracing, and dancing together in a crowded Pigalle nightclub. This non-judgemental image presents a full-figured prostitute advertising her physique under the glow of a streetlamp as a cigarette seductively dangles from her lips.
Hailing from an affluent background, her penetrating and profound black and white portraits of nudists, transgender people, and the mentally ill question ideas of normality and delve into issues of identity, race, disability, and gender theory. Parsons FoundationPhotography Collection.
Known for wandering the New York City streets with just a small camera in tow, Arbus photographed an interracial couple in A young man and his pregnant wife in Washington Square Park, N. Their gazes reveal vulnerability and strength in equal measure. They were her equals. Like Arbus, Goldin also grew up in a respectable family. Desperately craving escape from this traditional upbringing, she ran away from home as a teenager.
Through her tight-knit group of friends, including prostitutes and drug addicts, Goldin not only found a sense of community but an adoptive family of sorts. In this, another non-traditional family portrait, we feel the overwhelming joy and liberation of simply being oneself. We also come to understand that one does not need to be related to be family. Here we see the soul select its own society. Nan Goldin, Picnic on the Esplanade, Boston, Skip to content. Share this: Tweet Share on Tumblr Email.
