Tori Overman and I did a research project this quarter on the photographer Nan Goldin.
Nan Goldin was born in Washington D.C. on September 12th 1953. When Nan was 14 years old, her older sister, Barbara Holly Goldin, committed suicide. She said that she started taking pictures because her memories of her sister were beginning to fade and she didn’t want that to happen to the rest of her life, friends, experiences.
She ended up in Satya Community School in Lincoln, Massachusetts. It was based on the “summer hill” school in England. A “free” school with no classes, and everyone ran around naked. (for the most part). She became the unofficial school photographer. Her first focus was her friend David Armstrong, who was a Drag Queen. She then got fully involved in the Drag Queen scene, in the early 70’s in Boston. She made her Surrogate family of friends, and they became the most important people in her life. She graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University in 1978.
Many of Nan’s friends began dying of AIDS. She photographed her best friend Cookie, who ended up marrying Vittorio Scarpati, an Italian artist. They both died in 1989 ( Cookie at the age of 40) due to AIDS related causes and both their ashes are in a flower bed at Church of St. Luke along with the ashes of their dog Beauty. (just thought the dog thing was cute).
Nan herself became addicted to Cocaine and for about a 6 month period didn’t leave the house, while doing 5-6 bags a day. In 1988 she entered a drug rehabilitation facility for 2 months, and then into a halfway house for 3 months and began doing self portraits as a way to help herself see the change the drugs were having on her. “fit back into my own skin.”
When she got out of rehab, it was the first time in her life that she was spending a significant amount of time outside during the day. She didn’t realize how much natural light could effect a photo until this time, and began to use the new found light to her advantage in her photographic work. This is when she started her work with landscapes, but she never showed these landscape pictures until much, much later. Goldin’s first exhibited was at Matthew Marks Gallery in 1992. This work led to “The Cookie Portfolio” from 1976-1989.
Her other most “notable” work is “The Ballard of Sexual Dependency” in 1986. Most of the “Ballard” subjects were dead by the 90’s to either drug over doses or AIDS.
In 1994 She and David Armstrong collaborated on a book called “A Double Life” which shows how Goldin and Armstrong differ in their photographic style while photographing the same subject and portraying the images side by side. Since 1995 Goldin, Armstrong, and several other photographers featured in a show together have been dubbed the “Boston School”. She spend a year in Berlin on a DAAD grant that brings artist to Berlin, showing her work she did surrounding AIDS and how it was effecting her friends. In December of 1996 she was interviewed on Charlie Rose to discuss her exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art, “I’ll be your Mirror”:
She has only once ever gotten a written release. All others have been just “understood”. The motivation behind her photography, was to capture and remember the moment, save the moment, and live in the moment fully. “so I could be there, and get lost, all at the same time” A way to seduce people: “I love to make people cum when I photograph them, that’s what I really want to do.”
She currently lives in New York and Paris and was admitted to the French Legion of Honor in 2006. Her most recent award is the 2007 Hasselblad Award. In 2006 in New York her show “Chasing a Ghost” opened. This was her first show that included moving pictures along with her still work. This show includes “Sisters, Saints, & Sybils.” Which includes a depiction of her sisters suicide and how Nan coped with it. Her Scopophilia exhibition is currently part of Patrice Chéreau’s special program at the Louvre.