Jim Goldberg

Jim Goldberg was born in 1953 and is an American artist, photographer, and writer whose work reflects a long-term and in-depth collaborations with neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations. Goldberg is part of the social aims movement in photography, using a straightforward, cinéma vérité approach, based on a fundamentally narrative understanding of photography. His empathy and the uniqueness of the subjects emerge in his works as shows by his statement:

“forming a context within which the viewer may integrate the unthinkable into the concept of self. Thus diffused, this terrifying other is restored as a universal.”

Goldberg explores the theme and motif of truth by writing sets of narratives on top of images to dictate a story. This could be an example of false representation as what people can really mean in photographs is not always what the person means in text. This un-reliable narrator shows how this could be a ‘take-over‘ of an image in order to dictate public assumptions from their own interpretation. For instance, the reader is unsure whether or not to judge if the person in the image had written the text or if someone else had partaken on the act. This makes the image in effect un-truthful as especially in Goldberg’s most influential book ‘Raised by Wolves‘ it shows how love had become un-truthful by the way Goldberg writes text on top as another significant medium.

Cinéma Vérité

Cinéma Vérité which is translated to ‘truthful cinema‘ is a style of documentary filmmaking, invented by Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov’s theory about Kino-Pravda and influenced by Robert Flaherty’s films. It combines improvisation with the use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind crude reality.

Cinéma Vérité in relationship to Direct Cinema and Observational Cinema, It is sometimes known as observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly centred without a narrator’s voice-over. There are subtle, yet important differences among terms expressing similar concepts: Direct Cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera’s presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the “observational mode“, a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.

Raised by Wolves 

Predominantly considered Goldberg’s most seminally influential project, Raised by Wolves combines ten years of original photographs, text, and other illustrative elements and mediums which include: (home movie stills, snapshots, drawings, diary entries, and images of discarded belongings) to document the lives of runaway teenagers in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Review: Cororan Gallery of Art

A review of the exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art noted that Goldberg made reference to other artists and photographers; used photographs, videos, objects, and texts to convey meaning; and

“let his viewers feel, in some corner of their psyches, the lure of abject lowliness, the siren call of pain.”

Although the accompanying book received one mixed review shortly after publication, it was described as “a heartbreaking novel with pictures”, and in The Photobook: A History, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger praised it as

“complex and thoughtful.”

USA. Hollywood, California. 1989. “Oasis”

In this series, Goldberg has a knack for focussing in on the pleasures of different mediums and material, his attention to the use of mixed media such as polaroids, the use of archive and a variation of portraits and landscape imager allows the reader to get a rounded glance of the havoc presented in a stereotypical teenagers lives.

Here is a short story of Goldberg’s ‘Raised by Wolves‘:

San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art

Jim Goldberg discusses the larger stories told through his photography practice: