CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/3/2024

In Nan Goldin's 'The Other Side,' you are who you pretend to be

"I first saw them—Ivy and Naomi and Colette—crossing the bridge near Morgan Memorial Thriftshop in downtown Boston. They were the most gorgeous creatures I'd ever seen. I was immediately infatuated. I followed them and shot some Super 8 film. That was in 1972. It was the beginning of an obsession that has lasted twenty years.
Soon after, I met them again through David, my closest friend, who had started to do drag. From my first night at The Other Side—the drag queen bar of Boston in the 70s—I came to life. I fell in love with one of the queens and within a few months moved in with Ivy and another friend. I was eighteen and felt like I was a queen too. Completely devoted to my friends, they became my whole world. Part of my worship of them involved photographing them. I wanted to pay homage, to show them how beautiful they were. I never saw them as men dressing as women, but as something entirely different—a third gender that made more sense than either of the other two. I accepted them as they saw themselves; I had no desire to unmask them with my camera. Since my early teens, I'd lived by an Oscar Wilde saying, that you are who you pretend to be. I had enormous respect for the courage my friends had in recreating themselves according to their fantasies…" —Nan Goldin, The Other Side. Featured image is "Picnic on the esplanade, Boston 1973."