brad

'Whatever happened to empathy?'

conscientious:

Well, here’s zinger of a review: “As a photographer, Nan Goldin has inspired a legion of imitators who tend to confuse certain lifestyle traits with artistic substance, a privileging of content over form with an excuse for taking sloppy photographs. I tend to think of them as the Vice generation, after the magazine that first published many a Goldin copyist under a hipster anti-ethos saturated with attention begging and unwarranted self-destruction.” This is Travis Jeppesen, reviewing some Nan Goldin show in Berlin. And more: “Her subjects, whether laughing or crying, often seem as though their minds are somewhere else, and their eyes are lost in pensive reverie (unlike the random soulless fashion victims hamming it up in, say, a Ryan McGinley).”

I don’t necessarily share Jeppesen’s excitement about Goldin’s work, but where he’s talking about the “Goldin copyists”, he’s spot on.