randomWalks

In one series, a couple and their son roll around on the bed, the parents alternating between attention to the child and each other. In another, Ms. Goldin shoots a woman on one bed, a man on another; he's tenderly touching their child's head. A sequence of the couple making love follows, with their child out of the picture. Ms. Goldin's mothers are sexual beings, never just maternal. A nursing mother's breast will also be an object in her husband's mouth.

All children wonder about their parents' devotion to each other and to themselves, and compete for their love. Freud said that it was the primal scene children longed to see, that sexual curiosity was the source for the desire to know. Everyone's Garden of Eden. Any photographer is outside the scene, watching. But wanting to get inside the familial embrace, or, like a child, into its parents' bed, Ms. Goldin is necessarily pitched outside the family's frame, and as a result the collection carries a startling melancholy.