In this genre the work of Richard Billingham, Nan Goldin, Larry Sultan and Robert Mapplethorpe are the ones I am most familiar. Using personal family or life experience to make work can be a useful untapped source for a photographer. Hidden perspectives that do or do not form part of common experience can help raise many intriguing questions for the viewer about the world we live in.
Goldin and Billingham's work appears to show a warts and all 'true' perspective of the lives of a group of people going about their lives - almost unaware, or a least comfortable, with the camera's presence. The work ostensibly presents as 'documentary' in outlook. Another approach would be Sultan and Mapplethorpe's posed and considered images. These appear more like a succession of contextual portraits with a point of view. Although it would be a mistake to assume that Goldin and Billingham are any less selective or aware of the artistic/aesthetic process when they make work.
I had the pleasure of seeing the Mapplethorpe retrospective at the Guggenheim in LA very recently. Mapplethorpe's subject matter, whether portrait or still life, uses the formal qualities of black and white Modernist photography to convey its message. The subjects are a mixture of self portraits, celebrity and model portraits, still life lilies, and Gay S&M practises. The work in many instances exuded a dark and vibrant quality that offset what could be a very formal Modernist aesthetic.
The S&M work in particular was presented in long glass cases in its original form; a set of prints that formed a portfolio of images that were housed in a box with a solid black cover. A large X was embossed into the top to denote a secretive world of pain and pleasure within that may not be suitable for the feint hearted viewer.
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