Nan Goldin and Zoe Strauss

Nan Goldin
Nan One Month After Being Battered, 1984

Nan Goldin is a Jewish, suburban American photographer. She is from a middle-class home in a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Nan's work is very expressive, meaning that her photographs cam show you how the person or people in them were feeling at that time. Nan Goldin took pictures from the late 1960s to the present. She took photos of drag queens, female nudes, women in front of mirrors, nightclubs, couples, and sex.

Nan's picture Nan One Month After Being Battered to Zoe's Monique Showing Black Eye. The subject of both of the photos is women who have been brutally beaten. They are both taken from a straight angle from the subject to the camera. The color of these photos is very important to the composition.

One of the main differences between these photos is that Nan Goldin's photo is a self portrait, while Zoe's is a picture of a stranger. Overall, Nan's photography tends to focus on her friends and family, while Zoe's focuses on people she meets on the street.