Nan Goldin’s Nan and Brian in Bed (NYC, 1983)

At the center of this photograph is empty space between the two subjects. Upon arriving at this point, the spectator’s eye immediately seeks a more concrete object on which to focus. The gaze of the woman directs our eyes, so that, although we remain uncomfortable voyeurs of this intimate scene, we are simultaneously placed in the position of the woman on the bed. We identify with her doubly, not only because we are directed to follow her gaze, but more crucially because she, too, is positioned as an observer in this photograph. She shares in our spectator status, and we in turn experience her sense of alienation in observing her lover, whose back faces both her and us, smoking a cigarette without returning her gaze.
Our own focus is initially on the face of the woman, who in turn focuses on her lover, and directs our gaze to him as well. Once our eyes rest upon him, however, we want to follow his gaze, which leads us outside the frame of the photograph. This ‘missing’ subject echoes back the empty space that first confronted us in the center of this photograph. The only visible subject of the man’s attention is the cigarette he holds to his mouth. The chain of gazes we have followed ends in the cigarette. Once again the subject the photograph offers to the viewer appears unsatisfying. In our search for the subject of this photograph we began with empty space, and have ended with the smallest object in the frame. To name the man or the woman as the subject would be more comfortable. Yet neither of them consents to be named as subject. The woman immediately insists that we look to the man as subject, yet he just as insistently refuses to participate in the scene.
This subjectlessness is precisely the subject of the photograph. The chain of gazes is necessarily a chain of desires. If we are intent in our observation of this photograph, we desire of it, but we cannot name the subject of our desire. We desire that knowledge of the photograph. The woman desires of the man some similar knowledge. The man sates his desire with a cigarette, and our desire is thwarted by this cigarette. We desire that this photograph yield its subject to us, respond to our desire for knowledge of it, and grant us some reciprocity. The same sentence could describe what Nan desires of Brian. Yet in the cigarette we find our desire unacknowledged and our search for the subject terminated abruptly and artificially. Both we as viewers and we as the woman are forced to reckon with the empty space we first perceived as the subject. In each object we considered as potential subject, all that is offered to us is that empty space.