Q.    This is a self-portrait by the artist Nan Goldin. Do you think she “constructed” this photograph?

A.Constructed photographs are those in which the photographer has intentionally manipulated or “constructed” elements of the picture. Nearly all of fashion photography is highly constructed, for example. The range of approaches to photography is very complex and includes artists, like Gregory Crudsen, who make pictures that are so highly constructed they look more like movie sets than photographs, to street photographers, who tend to take images as they find them.  There are also artists who fall somewhere in between these extremes, like Jeff Wall, whose photographs appear spontaneous when in actuality they are highly stylized and arranged.

Nan Goldin’s approach to photography is generally spontaneous and diaristic. The elegance and power of her work is based in her ability to honestly and un-self-consciously record very personal details about her own life and the lives of the people she is close to.

There is a detail in this image which was intentionally and consciously included, however, which is central to its meaning. This self-portrait is particularly gripping for two reasons. Not only is Nan showing us her face after she has been recently beaten, she decided to contrast this with freshly applied red lipstick, a very powerful symbol of female sexuality and independence . (Red, by the way, is also powerfully symbolic in other ways – it is the color of blood and it is often the color we associate with both love and the devil). By taking her self-portrait after she had applied lipstick, she made her image defiant instead of pitiful. She is, very effectively, sending a message about her ability to survive to the person who beat her, and in doing so she not only asserts her dignity, she triumphs.