Embracing Queerness

I’ve been going through some growing pains lately, slowly trying to unveil parts of myself that were maybe always there but I haven’t fully embraced. A visit through Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency at the Art Gallery of Ballarat — on loan from the National Gallery — felt like the perfect space to relish in youthful and joyous queerness.

But my viewing of the exhibition’s framed prints, as opposed to Goldin’s iconic photobook or slideshow, was different, as I made the trip with my parents. Two people that have been watching me grow from the periphery, as I make attempts to mould myself outside of them and learn about my own queerness.

​‘Sometimes I think you might be gayer than your sister and her girlfriend combined...’ — my Mum’s recent thought.

Their questions and comments don’t come from a malicious place, just a desire to know about their child and gain a clearer definition of who they are. But I can’t give that to them. Not when I am still so unsure.

We can only see vignettes into moments of queerness when it presents itself, because it is only when we see what’s considered ‘normal’ that we recognise objective queerness. My past and present versions of myself are polar opposites, but maybe they are the same. It’s just become easier to recognise myself outside of others. But being able to sit within The Ballad, seeing the human experience in full, from the joy to the sorrow, it makes me feel ready to never be enough for someone else. Allow for that flaw to just be.

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a prolific series, an evocative and daring display for its time, bearing witness to a world that wasn’t visible in the everyday. But slowly and patiently queer realities are being celebrated with a warm embrace.

The Ballad was originally presented as a slideshow, an intimate viewing party shared among Goldin’s closest and dearest, a chosen family seen through her eyes. It was an ever-changing selection, meticulously curated and soundtracked by those starring in the images, partially transforming into a performance on how we see ourselves among friends. Less about strangers. The photobook came later; Goldin’s memories preserved on pages and passed onto others. Another rich practice that connects us back to our familial roots. But for Goldin, her family was the relationships she cultivated from queer connections.

Now, we see Goldin’s world translated through a sequence of framed Cibachrome prints only made possible by the discontinued process of printing slide images onto photographic paper. Each one is uniform in size and spacing, maintaining museum convention, but the eye lingers on every detail of the single image, and the flash of Goldin’s camera feels immediate and luminescent behind the frame’s glass.

National Gallery Curator of Photography Anne O’Hehir and of this iteration of The Ballad, shares with audiences across regional Victoria the original narrative laid out within the photobook; starting with love and coupling, ending with death and departing. Onlookers into Goldin’s inner world travel through the three rooms at their own pace, gawking simultaneously. It is a lot to take in at first. Reading the introductory portraits of unfamiliar faces, learning who Goldin’s family were only by the characters they play in front of the camera. All the while, The Ballad is scored by hits from the 1970s, 1980s and old favourites of Goldin’s. Songs of love, heartbreak, celebration and growth are heard and embodied within the images seen. How is it that music can become the memories we cling onto, bringing forward forgotten times within a single note? Goldin knows this all too well.

I have known about Nan Goldin for a while, particularly her photographs from The Ballad, so the exhibition wasn’t surprising. It’s one of the first projects you learn about when studying photography. This viewing for me wasn’t about seeing but holding the same space; to connect with a moment in time I will never know, but feel like somehow I was there. Maybe I knew Bryan, Cookie, Sharon and Suzanne. I could empathise with the tears, elate with the same joy and recognise the bruises left by broken relationships. There is only so much you can say about an image of Goldin’s that she doesn’t already tell you in an instant.

So, I tried to listen to those around me instead, patiently and earnestly. My parents got through the exhibition quickly, pausing briefly at a few images of interest, not particularly noticing the magazine or pages under Perspex. It was best not to colour their experience of the works from my perspective. So, I paid attention to the rest of Ballarat’s visitors. A blend of locals and tourists seeing more than just The Ballad.

To showcase the works of Nan Goldin in a regional area like Ballarat could be considered strange or dissonant. But perhaps these are the people that need to see Goldin, the kids who dream of moving away and finding themselves elsewhere. Just as Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy resurges online, the lyrics set the tone of why The Ballad might exist, how many of us are searching for better.

But now, an audience of Gallery visitors in Ballarat — many, older visitors searching for the gilded frames of Ballarat’s colonial past — wander into unexpected rooms. Seeing Goldin’s queer community, her past and the relationships she formed during her youth.

I point out a personal favourite to my parents. The Hug 1980 is not raunchy like the variety of action-shots of Goldin’s friends and lovers ‘hooking up’, or as tongue-in-cheek as Boys Pissing, New York City 1982. The Hug is a blur, uncertain yet passionate. Goldin’s flash punctuates the space and captures two people intimately embracing, gripping each other tightly in an unidentifiable cold white room. You can’t see their faces, but one’s hair is swinging through the frame as strands separate at the ends and the other’s muscular forearm is tense and hard as it wraps around the waist of a blue dress. The moment could be intimate and loving, but there is a dominance that comes from this unknown arm. I feel animosity and hunger in this image. Maybe desire and passion, or a rage that can only stem from envy.

‘It’s a bit weird all of it…’ scoffs a gentleman in front of Goldin’s Hug.

He probably would have preferred the menagerie of the Lindsay Family’s prints nearby. But I also don’t blame his bluntness. Because is this gallery the right context for Goldin?

The Ballad is raw, loud and fast paced. Should today’s audiences be in a mosh pit, breaking a sweat and panting for air as a flurry of images come into view? But maybe it’s not about reliving these moments. It’s about providing these images their worthy space and time within walls of an institution that has a history of elitism. The National Gallery acquired The Ballad because of its cultural commentary on queerness and Goldin’s legacy on photography and the Art Gallery of Ballarat recognises its impact for highlighting queer perspectives in regional spaces. And, of course, these images wouldn’t voice an entire community’s story if it weren’t for Goldin.

So, maybe the gallery space is the perfect space to display The Ballad, opening the diary to a clash of audiences who are as unfamiliar as familiar to these sights. But ensuring the memories aren’t lost to a haze of cigarette smoke. The stoicism of the framed images isn’t disrupting the tempo of The Ballad — with music softly thumping throughout the rooms — it is an act of self-preservation.

Picnic on the Esplanade, Boston 1973 1973 is a wonderful example of this. A communal moment of shared joy and a meal. The Ballad isn’t just how queerness opposes ‘the norm’ but how acceptance of queerness can be ‘the norm’. Queerphobia, transphobia, even homophobia, still a challenging battleground for many folk in the community, with stories of trauma and heartache littering our lives. Goldin has been a fierce advocate for these stories to be heard, as she was directly impacted by the AIDs epidemic in the 1980s and saw many loved ones affected. But that’s not the entire picture. There is room to breathe, to celebrate one another and to feel like all is lost. The riverbank framing the fluidity of queer identities as Goldin’s chosen family eat cake is a call for celebration and embrace.

I don’t think about my parents’ youth often. Dad has hinted at his past, delighted in the stories of the clubs he frequented and his love for the music scene at the time (and passed onto his kids). But Mum hasn’t really given her younger self the same freedom to be seen or heard. My Mum’s youth still feels a bit like a shadow, maybe that’s what my adulthood feels like for them both. As they can only see what’s being cast by myself.

So, I tell my Mum that I was figuring myself out, just queer for now. The language we use to define ourselves will never be clear, or translatable. But it is something we can speak into existence for ourselves at the very least.

This story is part of the 2024 Young Writers Digital Residency.