Photographer Spotlight: Nan Goldin

Introduction

3 Minute Read + 6 Minute Video

A shirtless person smokes while sitting on a bed; another person lies on the bed, looking at them.

© Nan Goldin, Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City, 1983

As a teenager in Boston in the 1960s, then in New York starting in the 1970s, Nan Goldin has taken intensely personal, spontaneous, sexual, and transgressive photographs of her family, friends, and lovers. In 1979 she presented her first slideshow in a New York nightclub, and her richly colored, snapshot like photographs were soon heralded as a groundbreaking contribution to fine art photography. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency—the name she gave her ever-evolving show—eventually grew into a forty-five-minute multimedia presentation of more than 700 photographs, accompanied by a musical soundtrack.

Read the following discussion and consider how Nan Goldin's approach to the use of photography and color could be used as you begin working on the upcoming Image-Making Assignment.

Connection

Considering the approaches of each of the photographers presented may be helpful in shaping how you may want to use photography and color towards successfully completing the following upcoming assignment:

Module Review by Recommended Date

Nan Goldin

The camera is as much a part of my everyday life as talking or eating or sex.

- Nan Goldin, from Nan Goldin’s lens on relationships - The ballad of sexual dependency

A woman with curly hair, red lipstick, and a black eye looks directly at the camera.

© Nan Goldin, Nan one month after being battered, 1984

Nan Goldin's work addresses essential themes of identity, love, sexuality, addiction, and mortality. Uniting art and activism, Goldin has confronted the HIV/AIDS epidemic since the 1980s and today brings international attention to the overdose crisis.

In this interview, Goldin introduces her latest book, Eden and After; a collection of portraits she has taken of children - one of the artist's ongoing photographic subjects. The book includes portraits of Goldin's close friends' children, with moments captured from pregnancy through to teenage years of life, and provides an intimate investigation into the narrative of childhood. (Video Length = 5:49)