“If men and women often seem unsuited to one another, maybe it’s because they have different emotional realities and speak a different emotional language. For many years, I found it hard to understand the feeling systems of men; I didn’t believe they were vulnerable and I empowered them in a way that didn’t acknowledge their fears and feelings.”
Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Please be assured that the above photo does not come from the Nan Goldin book, in case you are not familiar with her work.)
This photo is from a crazy catalog for a company called F.M. Allen. My contact info got picked up by a direct mail service and magazines of wealthy living started to arrive. Married couples in hunting gear sip wine in feral MacMansions. Contrast this to the scenes in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. (copyright 1986 Aperture Foundation). Drug-addicted anti-materialists batter each other in skanky city apartments where the drywall has crumbled. You will have to hunt down the Nan Goldin photos yourself. I don’t have the guts to post them here. I love the photos, for suspicious reasons. Her peeps need to take showers, make their beds, eat a square meal. The lucky folks in the F.M. Allen catalog just need live animals to shoot. They are clean as hell.