Ivy in the Boston Garden: Back

1973

Not on view

Returned to lender

This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.

While still in college, Nan Goldin spent two years recording performers at the Other Side, a Boston drag bar that hosted beauty pageants on Monday nights. This black-and-white study of Ivy, Goldin’s friend from the bar, walking alone through the Boston Common is one of the artist’s earliest photographs. The portrait evokes the glamorous world of fashion photography and hints at its loneliness. In all of her photographs, Goldin explores the natural twinning of fantasy and reality; it is the source of their pathos and rhythmic emotional beat. A decade after this elegiac photograph, she conceived the first iteration of her 1985 breakthrough color series, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, which was presented as an ever-changing visual diary using a slide projector and synchronized music.

Artwork Details

Overview

Exhibition History

Title: Ivy in the Boston Garden: Back
Artist: Nan Goldin (American, born Washington, D.C., 1953)
Date: 1973
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: Sheet: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection
Curatorial Department: Photographs