Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is an American photographer and activist whose groundbreaking work captures the raw intimacy of subcultural life, particularly the LGBT and post‑punk scenes of the late 1970s and 1980s. Born Nancy Goldin in Washington, D.C. in 1953, she grew up in the Boston suburb of Swampscott before leaving home at age 13 and eventually finding a creative outlet through a Polaroid camera donated to the Satya Community School. Her early fascination with fashion photography gave way to a deeper urge to document the lives of drag queens, transgender people, and her own chosen family, a shift inspired by the gritty realism of Larry Clark’s Tulsa and the candid eye of Lisette Model. Goldin’s first solo exhibition in 1973 introduced a snapshot aesthetic that would later define her magnum opus, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a slideshow‑turned‑book that chronicles more than 700 images taken between 1979 and 1986 and was first shown at the 1985 Whitney Biennial. The work functions as a visual diary, displaying moments of love, joy, drug use, violence and the devastating impact of the AIDS crisis on her community, and includes the iconic self‑portrait Nan One Month After Being Battered, 1984. After the loss of many friends to AIDS, Goldin expanded her practice to include installations, filmic slideshows, and commercial fashion commissions for brands such as Gucci and Dior, while continuing to explore themes of memory and trauma. In recent years she has become a vocal activist against the opioid epidemic, co‑founding the advocacy group P.A.I.N. to confront the Sackler family’s role in the crisis; her activism culminated in high‑profile protests at institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Tate. Awarded the Hasselblad Award (2007), the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2006) and the Edward MacDowell Medal (2012), Goldin remains a pivotal figure who blurs the line between art and life, using photography as both testimony and act of resistance.