Loneliness Belongs to the Photographer

In her beautiful meander of a book “The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone,” Olivia Laing examines the idea of loneliness, in particular the loneliness of the city dweller, through the works and lives of a number of different artists. She proposes that loneliness is less a state than it is a fixed part of our identity, a tribe one might belong to as much as we might the tribes of queerness or blackness or femaleness. Implicit in her book are two intriguing notions: first, that loneliness, true loneliness, is an especially American trait (or privilege, or curse, depending on who you are); and second, that it is a realm most deeply inhabited, and fluently expressed, by visual artists. Laing includes performers in her study—poignantly, Klaus Nomi, the countertenor and lonesome bird of the late-nineteen-seventies East Village art scene—but spends the majority of her time discussing the acknowledged masters of modern despondency: Edward Hopper, of course, with his crayon-ish greens and reds and neon chiaroscuro; Andy Warhol, isolated and protected by his layers of sartorial artifice; and David Wojnarowicz, the leader of his own crew of lost boys.