The editor of the RA Magazine for winter 2021 has asked contributors to nominate their favourite depictions of artists. Five have chosen works by photographers.
Gabriella Boyd: Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a record of a 15-year period of her life. Brimming with love and brutal honesty, it captures her struggle for intimacy.
Phoebe Cummings: The photograph Image from Yagul, 1973, both of and by Ana Mendieta, covered in flowers. She still defies categorisation.
Vanessa Jackson: Claude Cahun’s double-headed self-portrait from 1929, titled Que me veux-tu? or ‘What do you want from me.’
Alastair Levy: A photograph from 1924 titled Marcel Duchamp with Shaving Lather, by Man Ray. A gloriously playful and perfectly deadpan depiction of the artist by his close friend.
Cathie Pilkington: When I first saw Robert Mapplethorpe’s 1982 portrait of Louise Bourgeois I thought, yes, that’s what women sculptors have to do: live a long time, make tons of work, tuck a giant penis under your arm, grin.