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2009.3

For over three decades, Nan Goldin has been making documentary-style photographs of intimate moments, creating a rich trove of images of contemporary life. Most of her subjects are close friends and family members, who pose boldly and comfortably in front of Goldin’s camera.

From Here to Maternity explores the archetypal mother–child relationship through twenty-four photographs taken between 1986 and 2000. These tender and striking images of parenthood show women breastfeeding and bathing babies, and changing their diapers. The dense arrangement of images is an unusual format for the artist, who tends to display her photographic prints as independent works. Included in the assembly is a piece in the ICA/Boston collection, Ulrike, Stockholm, 1998, a portrait of an infant that is reminiscent of historical depictions of Jesus as a child. The photograph of a water fountain in Amalfi, Italy, with water spouting from a figure’s breasts, makes a connection to other iconic depictions of maternal figures. Interested in filmmaking, Goldin is known for presenting her photographs in slideshows accompanied by music. The most famous of these, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, was first exhibited at the ICA in 1985. The deliberate sequencing of From Here to Maternity is reminiscent of the slideshow format, and the title references film history by evoking the 1953 classic From Here to Eternity.

From Here to Maternity complements other works by Nan Goldin in the ICA’s collection, contributing to a fuller representation of this important contemporary artist. It builds on an impressive array of collection works by prominent contemporary photographers, including Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Roe Ethridge, Noriko Furunishi, and Boris Mikhailov.

2009.1

2006.13

Renowned photographer Nan Goldin has a long association with Boston and specifically the ICA/Boston. In 1985, the ICA presented Goldin’s legendary The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, one of her first museum exhibitions, and has shown her work numerous times since. Lil Laughing, Swampscott, MA was part of a 2006 gift of photographs from the collection of Lillian and Hyman Goldin, the artist’s parents.

Sitting on the edge of a bed, the artist’s mother laughs as she grips “stress balls,” an element that inserts tension into the familial scene. Lil’s expression lies somewhere between hysterical laugh and primal scream, an edge often evoked in Goldin’s photographs. This is one of the first works to enter the ICA’s collection, and it marks the museum’s commitment to this original and important Boston-born artist.

2006.12

An influential artist known for her seemingly spontaneous, personal photographs of family and friends, Nan Goldin finds the unique and intimate embedded in the ordinary. Goldin has a long and significant history both in Boston and with the ICA/Boston: she studied at the Museum School of the Museum of Fine Arts and has been exhibited at the ICA seven times since 1984.

Goldin’s work has been celebrated for its “uncanny attention and attraction to the drama and the commonplace of life,” as Elizabeth Sussman wrote in the catalogue essay for Goldin’s Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition I’ll Be Your Mirror (1996). Bruce in the Smoke, Pozzuoli, Italy captures the artist’s ability to depict everyday theatricality, representing a highly stylized poetic strain, with its almost monochromatic palette and the obscured, crouching subject. In contrast with Goldin’s characteristic diary-like images, this photograph seems more formally conceived. Bruce in the Smoke, Pozzuoli, Italy celebrates the individual at the same time that it uncovers the inevitable solitude of the self. The light and smoke that surround the figure simultaneously reveal his presence and obscure his identity, offering hope and consolation at the same time that they expose the isolation and anonymity of the lone man, Bruce, on a beach in Pozzuoli, Italy.

Bruce in Smoke, Pozzuoli is one of a number of photographs by Goldin in the ICA/Boston’s collection and joins works by other artists who also examine identity and relationships through photography, including Rineinke Dijkstra and Catherine Opie.

2015.02

For over forty years, Nan Goldin has created a visual diary of her closest friends and relatives, documenting the remarkable and at times difficult moments in everyday life. Lovers embrace, performers and drag queens wait backstage, and family members meet at death beds in Goldin’s corpus of work.

For an artist who became known for raw scenes of her and her friends’ lives, Honda Brothers in Cherry Blossom Storm, Tokyo, 1994, is perhaps a slight departure and surprisingly joyful. The artist spent time working in Japan in 1994 working on her renowned Tokyo Love series, in which she photographed the underground scenes of Tokyo. This particular photograph captures a moment of delight, as the two boys stand amidst a shower of swirling cherry blossoms. The photograph captures the blossoming of the cherry trees in springtime in Tokyo, a fleeting instance and the resulting joy.

The ICA/Boston was the first museum to organize a solo exhibition of Nan Goldin’s work. The artist expressed her desire to have a selection of photographs from her parents’ collection come into the museum’s permanent collection. Honda Brothers in Cherry Blossom Storm, Tokyo is part of the generous gift of Lillian and Hyman Goldin, adding the museum’s already important collection of photographs by Nan Goldin, including other images from her travels in Japan, such as Noa Dressing for the Venus Show at Shogun Club, Tokyo; Takaho After Kissing, Tokyo; and Tomoyuki in Front of T.V., Tokyo (all 1994).

2006.11

Photographer Nan Goldin is best known for intimate portraits of herself, her family, and her friends, and is acclaimed for her distinctive ability to capture the surreal aspects of the everyday. She was a teenager in Boston, attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and then moved to New York City in the 1970s, documenting the city’s scene and often turning the camera on herself.

Fitting into Goldin’s oeuvre of diary-like photographs, Self-Portrait on the Train, Germany is a closely cropped image of Goldin gazing out a train window. This self-portrait can be seen a metaphor for the artist’s entire oeuvre, which captures the passing landscape of her life as viewed through the lens of her eye/camera. In Self-Portrait on the Train, Germany, Goldin depicts a quiet moment of contemplation, isolation, and anticipation. While laying bare the solitude of the self, Goldin also celebrates the individual ensconced in her inner world as well as the landscape that passes by as she travels between places and times.

Self-Portrait on the Train, Germany is one of a number of photographs by Goldin in the ICA/Boston collection and joins works by other artists who also examine identity and relationships through photography, including Rineke Dijkstra and Catherine Opie.

2015.01

A celebrated photographer with roots in Boston and at the ICA/Boston, Nan Goldin has made intense portraits of her friends, family, and strangers. In 1985, the ICA presented Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, one of her first museum exhibitions, and has shown her work numerous times in subsequent years.

Chrissy with Her 100-Year-Old Grandmother, Provincetown is part of a gift from the collection of Goldin’s parents, Lillian and Hyman Goldin, facilitated by the artist in 2006. A silver gelatin print, the medium Goldin preferred for her early work, the photograph was taken during her student days at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Even at this nascent stage of her career, the image shows the artist’s distinctive ability to capture moments pregnant with meaning. Sitting at the bedside of an ailing grandparent, her friend Chrissy stares into the distance, beyond the room and the frame. The emotional connection between the two is evident: Chrissy tenderly holds her grandmother’s frail hand to her chest as the elderly woman gazes up at her intently, as if searching her face for reassurance or meaning. Among the first works to enter the ICA’s collection, it marks the museum’s commitment to this original and important Boston artist.

2006.10

Cindy Sherman is known for fusing performance and photography in identity-morphing “self-portraits” that explore female character types. Since her days as a student in Buffalo in the mid-1970s, Sherman has been taking photographs of herself in highly staged environments, transforming her appearance with costumes, makeup, and wigs. She began the series Untitled Film Stills in 1977 shortly after moving to New York City, and continued the series until 1980 when, as she says, she “ran out of clichés.” Totaling seventy black-and-white photographs, this series is Sherman’s seminal foray into her now-signature photographic practice: playing the roles of both actor and director, changing her persona with simple props and costumes.

The first six prints in the series were shot in Sherman’s New York apartment and reveal snippets of the domestic life of an imagined blonde movie star. Untitled Film Still #3 shows a woman wearing an apron standing over the kitchen sink, surrounded by ordinary housewares: a bottle of dish soap and drying rack, a spice jar on a shelf, and, in the foreground, an open container of salt and the handle of a stovetop pot. Captured while pausing during a domestic activity, the woman stares over her shoulder, her right hand wrapped around her stomach. Set in the banal environment of a cramped apartment kitchen, the scene assumes a tension as the figure’s gaze suggests an unseen force in an unknown narrative. The title’s reference to the movie industry lends a voyeuristic quality to this glimpse into the private life of a female character who has yet to discover herself.

Joining other photographs by Sherman in the ICA/Boston collection, Untitled Film Still #3 enhances the holdings of work by the most important contemporary photographers, including Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, and Nan Goldin, who also generate questions about the truth of the staged portrait.

800.09.23

Alongside an established profile in the world of fashion and magazine photography, Collier Schorr also has been working in portrait photography since the late 1980s, particularly of adolescents. She has documented portraits of teenagers across the United States, mostly of white youth, as well as social and cultural figures, performers, wrestlers, and soldiers. Her work addresses the desires and conflicts that attend an adolescent’s dawning sexuality and the construction of gender. The subjects in her photographs typically display the longing, intimacy, and alienation that accompany the formation of identity, and her titles frequently point to these issues of gender fluidity. In all her portraits, Schorr offers minimal settings and staging, focusing instead on her sitter with sharp contrasts, vivid colors and shadows, and personal encounters through the camera.

2012.17