ABSTRACT
Photographers Nan Goldin and Catherine Opie and the performance and multimedia artists Nikki Lee and Zackary Drucker have created works in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s that reflect and fall into conversation with cultural trends that emphasize the idea of a performative self. Sarah Ruddy took her friend Nan Goldin's phrase as the title of her 2009 essay 'A Radiant Eye Yearns from Me'. The about-face that Goldin performs in Nan one month after being battered is possible because all along, in all her photographs, she has been performing this gaze that aspires to love and nurture the subjects her camera captures. Goldin's Cookie Portfolio exemplifies the feminine gaze of love that Goldin claims typifies her photographs with the very important torque that Goldin's loving is focused here not on her biological children and not on a man, but on a woman whom she loves.
