Nan One Month After Being Battered
Nan one month after being battered features the key characteristic of martyrdom: the disconnect between the bodily and the emotional. Goldin's face shows clear physical injury, and the state of healing of her deeply bruised and bloodied eyes is clearly tracked from the date in the title. Her body is mending itself, with the blood under the tissues of her skin receding to accompany her defiant, almost detached expression, with no indication of being in pain. The dichotomy seems to draw on the tradition of martyrs, implying that despite physical suffering, she is undisturbed and retains a dignity of mind.
A gendered distinction can be drawn, however, between how the two images create that sense of martyrdom. In Lamentation of Christ at the Tomb, a male figure of the martyr is created with disconnect between emotional vulnerability and an improbably undamaged physical body. In Nan one month after being battered, a female figure drawing on the tradition of martyrdom is created using a polarity between physical injury and self-presentation. According to John Berger: "That part of the woman's self which is the surveyor treats the part which is the surveyed so as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be treated" (Berger, 1972, p.61). Nan Goldin presents herself as well-groomed and made-up: she would like to be treated well. The straightforward presentation of the dissonance between how her partner has acted upon her and how she acts upon herself is a tool of self-canonization, for martyrs' bodies are subjected to violence from outsiders. Note, also, that beauty is associated with the female martyrs (Agatha, Catherine, Pelagia) of The Golden Legend (de Voragine, 1998).