
Nan GoldinVereinigte Staaten, 1953Darf man es sehen?
Chicago, Vereinigte Staaten
Es gehört zur Sammlung, ist derzeit aber nicht ausgestellt.
Nan Goldin has said: "To photograph from your own life has these components of risk and uncontrollable possibilities and subtext that you can't impose upon photos; they come from experience." For thirty-five years, it has been her obsession to record her world, capitalizing on photography's potential for immediacy, emotion, and anecdote. Goldin's pictures, however, present subjects living outside or against the conventional family life shown in typical snapshots. These photographs also bear witness to moments of utmost intimacy—lovemaking, violence, addiction, hospitalization—and to the rollercoaster of accompanying emotions. Suzanne, Crying, NYC is emblematic of her approach, and its power is all the more remarkable if we contemplate when, if ever, someone took our photograph while we cried.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
1980–1983
Films with Bette Gordon and Sara Driver
She acts alongside her friend, the Irish artist Vivienne Dick, in Bette Gordon's “Empty Suitcases” (1980) and, in “Variety” (1983), plays a character named Nan while photographing the production; those pictures were published in 2009. For Sara Driver she shoots stills for “You Are Not I” (1981), starring her lover and friend Suzanne Fletcher, and plays one of the accident victims herself.
1985
“Ballad” at the Whitney Biennial
The slideshow of “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” is screened at the Whitney Biennial; a year later it is published as a book.
1986
“The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” appears as a book
Aperture publishes the “Ballad” as a book, with help from Marvin Heiferman, Mark Holborn and Goldin's friend Suzanne Fletcher: its 125 pictures are sequenced like the slideshow, with song titles. In her foreword she calls it a diary she lets people read, and the people in it her “tribe”.
1986
Her first book is dedicated to her sister
Goldin dedicates her first photobook, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, to her sister, who took her own life at eighteen.
1986–1998
Her pictures in other people's films
In “Working Girls” (1986) the photographs attributed to the heroine Molly are Goldin's; in Mary Harron's “I Shot Andy Warhol” (1996) she is credited with “special photography”. The photographs of the heroine of Lisa Cholodenko's “High Art” (1998) are based on her work.
1987
“Ballad” in Arles and the Kodak Photobook Award
The slideshow and exhibition of the “Ballad” are shown at the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival; the book wins the Kodak Photobook Award.