Nan Goldin
Encyclopedia
People of the United States
The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
photographer.
Life and work
Goldin was born in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest daughter Barbara Holly, at the age of eighteen, committed suicide. After attending the nearby Lexington High School, she enrolled at the Satya Community School in Lincoln
Lincoln, Massachusetts
Lincoln is a town in the historic area of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,362 at the 2010 census, including residents of Hanscom Air Force Base that live within town limits...
, where a teacher introduced her to the camera in 1968. Goldin was then fifteen years old. Her first solo show, held in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in 1973, was based on her photographic journeys among the city's gay and transsexual communities, to which she had been introduced by her friend David Armstrong
David Armstrong (photographer)
David Armstrong is a photographer based out of New York.-Personal Life:Armstrong was born in 1954, in Arlington, Massachusetts. He is openly homosexual, and uses this in his photography.-Career:...
. Goldin graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is an undergraduate and graduate college located in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to the visual arts. It is affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in partnership with Tufts University...
/Tufts University
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
in 1977/1978, where she had worked mostly with Cibachrome prints.
Following graduation, Goldin moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. She began documenting the post-punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
new-wave music scene, along with the city's vibrant, post-Stonewall
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
subculture of the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was drawn especially to the Bowery
Bowery, Manhattan
Bowery , commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan...
's hard-drug subculture; these photographs, taken between 1979 and 1986, form her famous work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency — a title taken from a song in Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's Threepenny Opera. These snapshot aesthetic
Snapshot aesthetic
The term snapshot aesthetic refers to a trend within fine art photography in the USA from around 1963 . The style typically features apparently banal everyday subject matter and off-centered framing. Subject matter is often presented without apparent link from image-to-image and relying instead on...
images depict drug use, violent, aggressive couples and autobiographical moments. Most of her Ballad subjects were dead by the 1990s, lost either to drug overdose
Drug overdose
The term drug overdose describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced...
or AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
; this tally included close friends and often-photographed subjects Greer Lankton
Greer Lankton
Greer Lankton was an American artist, whose work was dedicated to creating life-like, posable dolls and figures. Greer Lankton was born Greg Lankton in Flint, Michigan, to a Presbyterian minister and his wife. It was during her rough childhood as a feminine boy that she began creating dolls."It...
and Cookie Mueller
Cookie Mueller
Dorothy Karen "Cookie" Mueller was an underground American actress, writer and Dreamlander, who starred in many of filmmaker John Waters' early films, including Multiple Maniacs,...
. In 2003, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
nodded to the work's impact, explaining Goldin had "forged a genre, with photography as influential as any in the last twenty years." In addition to Ballad, she combined her Bowery pictures in two other series: "I'll Be Your Mirror" (from a song on The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...
's The Velvet Underground & Nico album) and "All By Myself."
Goldin's work is most often presented in the form of a slideshow
Slideshow
A slide show is a display of a series of chosen information or pictures, done for artistic or instructional purposes. Slide shows are conducted by a presenter using an apparatus, such as a carousel slide projector, an overhead projector or in more recent years, a computer running presentation...
, and has been shown at film festivals; her most famous being a 45 minute show in which 800 pictures are displayed. The main themes of her early pictures are love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality; these frames are usually shot with available light
Available light
In photography and cinematography, available light or ambient light refers to any source of light that is not explicitly supplied by the photographer for the purpose of taking photos. The term usually refers to sources of light that are already available naturally or artificial light already being...
. She has affectionately documented women looking in mirrors, girls in bathrooms and barrooms, drag queens, sexual acts, and the culture of obsession and dependency. The images are viewed like a private journal made public.
Goldin's work since 1995 has included a wide array of subject matter: collaborative book projects with famed Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki
Nobuyoshi Araki
is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. He is also known by the nickname .-Life and career:Araki was born in Tokyo, studied photography during his college years and then went to work at the advertising agency Dentsu, where he met his future wife, the essayist Yōko Araki...
; New York City skylines; uncanny landscapes (notably of people in water); her lover, Siobhan; and babies, parenthood and family life.
Goldin lives in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
—one reason the French Pompidou Centre mounted a major retrospective of her work in 2002. Her hand was injured in a fall in 2002, and she currently retains less ability to turn it than in the past.
In 2006, her exhibition, Chasing a Ghost, opened in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. It was the first installation by her to include moving pictures, a fully narrative score, and voiceover, and included the disturbing three-screen slide and video presentation Sisters, Saints, & Sybils. The work involved her sister Barbara's suicide and how she coped through a numerous amount of images and narratives. Her works are developing more and more into cinemaesque features, exemplifying her graviation towards working with films.
She was presented the 2007 Hasselblad Award
Hasselblad Award
The Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography is an award granted to "a photographer recognized for major achievements".The award – and the foundation – was set up from the estate of Erna and Victor Hasselblad...
on 10 November 2007. She has been represented in America exclusively by Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks is an art gallery located in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea. Founded in the early 1990s by Matthew Marks, it specializes in modern and contemporary art in a variety of media: including painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, film, and drawings and prints...
since 1992 and Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Yvon Lambert in 1966. There are two locations; one in Paris and the second in New York City.-History:...
in Paris.
Criticism
Some critics have accused her of making heroin-use appear glamorous, and of pioneering a grungeGrunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
style that later became popularized by youth fashion magazines such as The Face
The Face (magazine)
The Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
and I-D
I-D
i-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The first issue was published in the form of a hand-stapled fanzine with text produced on a typewriter...
. However, in a 2002 interview with The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, Goldin herself called the use of "heroin chic
Heroin chic
Heroin chic was a look popularized in mid-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, and jutting bones.The look, which promoted emaciated features and androgyny, was an alternative that stood in direct contradiction to the "healthy" and vibrant look of models...
" to sell clothes and perfumes "reprehensible and evil."
Censorship
Recently, an exhibition of Goldin's recent works was censored in Brazil, only two months before the beginning, due to the sexually explicit, close to children, content of her work. One of the images shows a nude couple, apparently having sex, beside a baby. In Brazil, there is a law that prohibits the image of minors associated to pornography.The sponsor of the exhibition, a cellphone company, claimed to be unaware of the content of Goldin's work and that there is a conflict of all the work with its educational project.
The curator of the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, changed the schedule in order to accommodate, in February of 2012, the Nan Goldin exhibition in Brazil.
Portrayal in film
The photographs by the character Lucy Berliner, played by actress Ally SheedyAlly Sheedy
Alexandra Elizabeth "Ally" Sheedy is an American film and stage actress, as well as the author of two books. She is best known for her roles in the Brat Pack films The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire.-Early life:...
in the 1998 film High Art
High Art
High Art is an independent film directed by Lisa Cholodenko and starring Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell.- Synopsis :Sydney , age 24, is a woman who has her whole life mapped out in front of her...
, were based on those by Goldin.
Exhibitions
2009: Exposed as guest of honour at Les Rencontres d'Arles, France and screening of The Ballad of Sexual Dependancy in the Théâtre Antique.External links
- Nan Goldin at the Matthew Marks Gallery
- Nan Goldin at the Museum of Contemporary Photography
- Interview with Nan Goldin
- Charlie Rose interviews Nan Goldin, 1996 (video)
- Nan Goldin at the Galerie Yvon Lambert
People of the United States
The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
photographer.
Life and work
Goldin was born in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest daughter Barbara Holly, at the age of eighteen, committed suicide. After attending the nearby Lexington High School, she enrolled at the Satya Community School in Lincoln
Lincoln, Massachusetts
Lincoln is a town in the historic area of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,362 at the 2010 census, including residents of Hanscom Air Force Base that live within town limits...
, where a teacher introduced her to the camera in 1968. Goldin was then fifteen years old. Her first solo show, held in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in 1973, was based on her photographic journeys among the city's gay and transsexual communities, to which she had been introduced by her friend David Armstrong
David Armstrong (photographer)
David Armstrong is a photographer based out of New York.-Personal Life:Armstrong was born in 1954, in Arlington, Massachusetts. He is openly homosexual, and uses this in his photography.-Career:...
. Goldin graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is an undergraduate and graduate college located in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to the visual arts. It is affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in partnership with Tufts University...
/Tufts University
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
in 1977/1978, where she had worked mostly with Cibachrome prints.
Following graduation, Goldin moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. She began documenting the post-punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
new-wave music scene, along with the city's vibrant, post-Stonewall
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
subculture of the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was drawn especially to the Bowery
Bowery, Manhattan
Bowery , commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan...
's hard-drug subculture; these photographs, taken between 1979 and 1986, form her famous work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency — a title taken from a song in Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's Threepenny Opera. These snapshot aesthetic
Snapshot aesthetic
The term snapshot aesthetic refers to a trend within fine art photography in the USA from around 1963 . The style typically features apparently banal everyday subject matter and off-centered framing. Subject matter is often presented without apparent link from image-to-image and relying instead on...
images depict drug use, violent, aggressive couples and autobiographical moments. Most of her Ballad subjects were dead by the 1990s, lost either to drug overdose
Drug overdose
The term drug overdose describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced...
or AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
; this tally included close friends and often-photographed subjects Greer Lankton
Greer Lankton
Greer Lankton was an American artist, whose work was dedicated to creating life-like, posable dolls and figures. Greer Lankton was born Greg Lankton in Flint, Michigan, to a Presbyterian minister and his wife. It was during her rough childhood as a feminine boy that she began creating dolls."It...
and Cookie Mueller
Cookie Mueller
Dorothy Karen "Cookie" Mueller was an underground American actress, writer and Dreamlander, who starred in many of filmmaker John Waters' early films, including Multiple Maniacs,...
. In 2003, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
nodded to the work's impact, explaining Goldin had "forged a genre, with photography as influential as any in the last twenty years." In addition to Ballad, she combined her Bowery pictures in two other series: "I'll Be Your Mirror" (from a song on The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...
's The Velvet Underground & Nico album) and "All By Myself."
Goldin's work is most often presented in the form of a slideshow
Slideshow
A slide show is a display of a series of chosen information or pictures, done for artistic or instructional purposes. Slide shows are conducted by a presenter using an apparatus, such as a carousel slide projector, an overhead projector or in more recent years, a computer running presentation...
, and has been shown at film festivals; her most famous being a 45 minute show in which 800 pictures are displayed. The main themes of her early pictures are love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality; these frames are usually shot with available light
Available light
In photography and cinematography, available light or ambient light refers to any source of light that is not explicitly supplied by the photographer for the purpose of taking photos. The term usually refers to sources of light that are already available naturally or artificial light already being...
. She has affectionately documented women looking in mirrors, girls in bathrooms and barrooms, drag queens, sexual acts, and the culture of obsession and dependency. The images are viewed like a private journal made public.
Goldin's work since 1995 has included a wide array of subject matter: collaborative book projects with famed Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki
Nobuyoshi Araki
is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. He is also known by the nickname .-Life and career:Araki was born in Tokyo, studied photography during his college years and then went to work at the advertising agency Dentsu, where he met his future wife, the essayist Yōko Araki...
; New York City skylines; uncanny landscapes (notably of people in water); her lover, Siobhan; and babies, parenthood and family life.
Goldin lives in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
—one reason the French Pompidou Centre mounted a major retrospective of her work in 2002. Her hand was injured in a fall in 2002, and she currently retains less ability to turn it than in the past.
In 2006, her exhibition, Chasing a Ghost, opened in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. It was the first installation by her to include moving pictures, a fully narrative score, and voiceover, and included the disturbing three-screen slide and video presentation Sisters, Saints, & Sybils. The work involved her sister Barbara's suicide and how she coped through a numerous amount of images and narratives. Her works are developing more and more into cinemaesque features, exemplifying her graviation towards working with films.
She was presented the 2007 Hasselblad Award
Hasselblad Award
The Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography is an award granted to "a photographer recognized for major achievements".The award – and the foundation – was set up from the estate of Erna and Victor Hasselblad...
on 10 November 2007. She has been represented in America exclusively by Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks is an art gallery located in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea. Founded in the early 1990s by Matthew Marks, it specializes in modern and contemporary art in a variety of media: including painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, film, and drawings and prints...
since 1992 and Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Yvon Lambert in 1966. There are two locations; one in Paris and the second in New York City.-History:...
in Paris.
Criticism
Some critics have accused her of making heroin-use appear glamorous, and of pioneering a grungeGrunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
style that later became popularized by youth fashion magazines such as The Face
The Face (magazine)
The Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
and I-D
I-D
i-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The first issue was published in the form of a hand-stapled fanzine with text produced on a typewriter...
. However, in a 2002 interview with The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, Goldin herself called the use of "heroin chic
Heroin chic
Heroin chic was a look popularized in mid-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, and jutting bones.The look, which promoted emaciated features and androgyny, was an alternative that stood in direct contradiction to the "healthy" and vibrant look of models...
" to sell clothes and perfumes "reprehensible and evil."
Censorship
Recently, an exhibition of Goldin's recent works was censored in Brazil, only two months before the beginning, due to the sexually explicit, close to children, content of her work. One of the images shows a nude couple, apparently having sex, beside a baby. In Brazil, there is a law that prohibits the image of minors associated to pornography.The sponsor of the exhibition, a cellphone company, claimed to be unaware of the content of Goldin's work and that there is a conflict of all the work with its educational project.
The curator of the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, changed the schedule in order to accommodate, in February of 2012, the Nan Goldin exhibition in Brazil.
Portrayal in film
The photographs by the character Lucy Berliner, played by actress Ally SheedyAlly Sheedy
Alexandra Elizabeth "Ally" Sheedy is an American film and stage actress, as well as the author of two books. She is best known for her roles in the Brat Pack films The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire.-Early life:...
in the 1998 film High Art
High Art
High Art is an independent film directed by Lisa Cholodenko and starring Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell.- Synopsis :Sydney , age 24, is a woman who has her whole life mapped out in front of her...
, were based on those by Goldin.
Exhibitions
2009: Exposed as guest of honour at Les Rencontres d'Arles, France and screening of The Ballad of Sexual Dependancy in the Théâtre Antique.External links
- Nan Goldin at the Matthew Marks Gallery
- Nan Goldin at the Museum of Contemporary Photography
- Interview with Nan Goldin
- Charlie Rose interviews Nan Goldin, 1996 (video)
- Nan Goldin at the Galerie Yvon Lambert
People of the United States
The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
photographer.
Life and work
Goldin was born in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest daughter Barbara Holly, at the age of eighteen, committed suicide. After attending the nearby Lexington High School, she enrolled at the Satya Community School in Lincoln
Lincoln, Massachusetts
Lincoln is a town in the historic area of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,362 at the 2010 census, including residents of Hanscom Air Force Base that live within town limits...
, where a teacher introduced her to the camera in 1968. Goldin was then fifteen years old. Her first solo show, held in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in 1973, was based on her photographic journeys among the city's gay and transsexual communities, to which she had been introduced by her friend David Armstrong
David Armstrong (photographer)
David Armstrong is a photographer based out of New York.-Personal Life:Armstrong was born in 1954, in Arlington, Massachusetts. He is openly homosexual, and uses this in his photography.-Career:...
. Goldin graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is an undergraduate and graduate college located in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to the visual arts. It is affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in partnership with Tufts University...
/Tufts University
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
in 1977/1978, where she had worked mostly with Cibachrome prints.
Following graduation, Goldin moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. She began documenting the post-punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
new-wave music scene, along with the city's vibrant, post-Stonewall
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
subculture of the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was drawn especially to the Bowery
Bowery, Manhattan
Bowery , commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan...
's hard-drug subculture; these photographs, taken between 1979 and 1986, form her famous work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency — a title taken from a song in Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's Threepenny Opera. These snapshot aesthetic
Snapshot aesthetic
The term snapshot aesthetic refers to a trend within fine art photography in the USA from around 1963 . The style typically features apparently banal everyday subject matter and off-centered framing. Subject matter is often presented without apparent link from image-to-image and relying instead on...
images depict drug use, violent, aggressive couples and autobiographical moments. Most of her Ballad subjects were dead by the 1990s, lost either to drug overdose
Drug overdose
The term drug overdose describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced...
or AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
; this tally included close friends and often-photographed subjects Greer Lankton
Greer Lankton
Greer Lankton was an American artist, whose work was dedicated to creating life-like, posable dolls and figures. Greer Lankton was born Greg Lankton in Flint, Michigan, to a Presbyterian minister and his wife. It was during her rough childhood as a feminine boy that she began creating dolls."It...
and Cookie Mueller
Cookie Mueller
Dorothy Karen "Cookie" Mueller was an underground American actress, writer and Dreamlander, who starred in many of filmmaker John Waters' early films, including Multiple Maniacs,...
. In 2003, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
nodded to the work's impact, explaining Goldin had "forged a genre, with photography as influential as any in the last twenty years." In addition to Ballad, she combined her Bowery pictures in two other series: "I'll Be Your Mirror" (from a song on The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...
's The Velvet Underground & Nico album) and "All By Myself."
Goldin's work is most often presented in the form of a slideshow
Slideshow
A slide show is a display of a series of chosen information or pictures, done for artistic or instructional purposes. Slide shows are conducted by a presenter using an apparatus, such as a carousel slide projector, an overhead projector or in more recent years, a computer running presentation...
, and has been shown at film festivals; her most famous being a 45 minute show in which 800 pictures are displayed. The main themes of her early pictures are love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality; these frames are usually shot with available light
Available light
In photography and cinematography, available light or ambient light refers to any source of light that is not explicitly supplied by the photographer for the purpose of taking photos. The term usually refers to sources of light that are already available naturally or artificial light already being...
. She has affectionately documented women looking in mirrors, girls in bathrooms and barrooms, drag queens, sexual acts, and the culture of obsession and dependency. The images are viewed like a private journal made public.
Goldin's work since 1995 has included a wide array of subject matter: collaborative book projects with famed Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki
Nobuyoshi Araki
is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. He is also known by the nickname .-Life and career:Araki was born in Tokyo, studied photography during his college years and then went to work at the advertising agency Dentsu, where he met his future wife, the essayist Yōko Araki...
; New York City skylines; uncanny landscapes (notably of people in water); her lover, Siobhan; and babies, parenthood and family life.
Goldin lives in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
—one reason the French Pompidou Centre mounted a major retrospective of her work in 2002. Her hand was injured in a fall in 2002, and she currently retains less ability to turn it than in the past.
In 2006, her exhibition, Chasing a Ghost, opened in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. It was the first installation by her to include moving pictures, a fully narrative score, and voiceover, and included the disturbing three-screen slide and video presentation Sisters, Saints, & Sybils. The work involved her sister Barbara's suicide and how she coped through a numerous amount of images and narratives. Her works are developing more and more into cinemaesque features, exemplifying her graviation towards working with films.
She was presented the 2007 Hasselblad Award
Hasselblad Award
The Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography is an award granted to "a photographer recognized for major achievements".The award – and the foundation – was set up from the estate of Erna and Victor Hasselblad...
on 10 November 2007. She has been represented in America exclusively by Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks is an art gallery located in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea. Founded in the early 1990s by Matthew Marks, it specializes in modern and contemporary art in a variety of media: including painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, film, and drawings and prints...
since 1992 and Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Yvon Lambert in 1966. There are two locations; one in Paris and the second in New York City.-History:...
in Paris.
Criticism
Some critics have accused her of making heroin-use appear glamorous, and of pioneering a grungeGrunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
style that later became popularized by youth fashion magazines such as The Face
The Face (magazine)
The Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
and I-D
I-D
i-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The first issue was published in the form of a hand-stapled fanzine with text produced on a typewriter...
. However, in a 2002 interview with The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, Goldin herself called the use of "heroin chic
Heroin chic
Heroin chic was a look popularized in mid-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, and jutting bones.The look, which promoted emaciated features and androgyny, was an alternative that stood in direct contradiction to the "healthy" and vibrant look of models...
" to sell clothes and perfumes "reprehensible and evil."
Censorship
Recently, an exhibition of Goldin's recent works was censored in Brazil, only two months before the beginning, due to the sexually explicit, close to children, content of her work. One of the images shows a nude couple, apparently having sex, beside a baby. In Brazil, there is a law that prohibits the image of minors associated to pornography.The sponsor of the exhibition, a cellphone company, claimed to be unaware of the content of Goldin's work and that there is a conflict of all the work with its educational project.
The curator of the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, changed the schedule in order to accommodate, in February of 2012, the Nan Goldin exhibition in Brazil.
Portrayal in film
The photographs by the character Lucy Berliner, played by actress Ally SheedyAlly Sheedy
Alexandra Elizabeth "Ally" Sheedy is an American film and stage actress, as well as the author of two books. She is best known for her roles in the Brat Pack films The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire.-Early life:...
in the 1998 film High Art
High Art
High Art is an independent film directed by Lisa Cholodenko and starring Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell.- Synopsis :Sydney , age 24, is a woman who has her whole life mapped out in front of her...
, were based on those by Goldin.
Exhibitions
2009: Exposed as guest of honour at Les Rencontres d'Arles, France and screening of The Ballad of Sexual Dependancy in the Théâtre Antique.External links
- Nan Goldin at the Matthew Marks Gallery
- Nan Goldin at the Museum of Contemporary Photography
- Interview with Nan Goldin
- Charlie Rose interviews Nan Goldin, 1996 (video)
- Nan Goldin at the Galerie Yvon Lambert
