About Nan Goldin:
Known for: photography of "underground" life styles and relationships, especially 45-minute slide show called "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" (first displayed in 1979) and her photographs of the human effects of AIDS
Dates: 1953 -
Occupation: photographer
Education:
- Satya Community School, Massachusetts
- Boston School of Fine Arts
More About Nan Goldin:
Nan Goldin was born in Washington, DC, and moved with her family to a Boston suburb. Her sister Barbara committed suicide in 1965, and Nan Goldin reacted by moving out of her home, living with foster families, and studying at an alternative school.
Nan Goldin began her photography work with friends when she was fifteen years old, often depicting people crossing gender lines. Her 1970s photographs continued with images of transvestites and drag queens.
After study at the Boston School of Fine Arts, where she began using color photography, Nan Goldin moved to New York, living in the Bowery. There, her own life with drugs and alcohol, sex, and violent relationships, were featured in her photographs.
Her 1979 slide show of photographs, running 45 minutes, came to be titled "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency." This show was expanded over time.
Nan Goldin in 1988 checked herself into a clinic to battle her addictions. In 1989 she documented the life of a friend, Cookie Mueller, who had died of AIDS with a collection of portraits.
In the 1990s, Goldin also worked in fashion photography, bringing a unique style to her work in that field.
A 1996 exhibition of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, "I'll Be Your Mirror," included photographs of many times of her own life.
She turned the "Ballad of Sexual Dependency" into a book of photographs published in 1986 and republished in 2005. Her photographs of Cookie Mueller became a book by that name published in 1991.
Nan Goldin has lived in Bangkok, Tokyo, Paris, and Berlin, as well as in New York.
