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Born in 1953 in Washington.
Lives and works in Paris and New York.
Gallery : www.matthewmarks.com
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When one sees Nan Goldin’s photographs for the first time, one wonders about the strange power of these images that simultaneously impress you and make you feel uncomfortable, these images that reach something very general and yet very personal inside you. Although we do not know who the people she photographs - named Cookie, Suzanne, David, Brian, French Chris and Siobhan - are, we begin at least to recognize them if not know them as we see their faces being repeated over and over. We begin to love them. We adopt them. Through these fragments of unique lives, over these specific and rememorized paths, we begin to read the story of a "family", a generation and a lifestyle.
(Frédéric Martel)
Nan Goldin was born in 1953 in Washington DC to a typical American "middle class" family that she left at a young age after the traumatic suicide of her older sister, Barbara. She began artistic and photographic studies. Soon, Goldin was rebuilding a social community via new friendships and lovers and this would become both a strong emotional fabric for her and the object of her work, the one being intimately bound to the other with almost no difference between the two. The issues of love, memory and identity are central to Nan Goldin’s photography. They are also central to her life. Traces captured by the camera since the 70s seem merely to be an extension of the body, snapshots taken as if they were the wink of an eye. They form a work of art that is absolutely unique, intense, critical and disproportionate. "Nan Goldin built herself up as an artist before becoming an adult. One can even say that it is through photography that she has matured and this link between art and life (...) has had something moving about it from the outset. Before photography, she was lost: "I had no idea who I was, I felt completely lost". Snapshots helped Goldin to become herself. "(Martel)
If the distinction between private and public spheres is today a sensitive issue in our lives - being, as they are, increasingly invaded by social networks and other forms of virtual sharing - Nan Goldin is completely elsewhere, despite linking these two territories in her work of art... Her work does not question the same issues, despite appearances. I think the central issues of The Balad of Sexual Dependency are quite different to modesty or obscenity, voyeurism or exhibitionism, loss or control of one’s image. These dichotomies, flush with the moral and the sense of private property that is so at the heart of today’s world, are not relevant for addressing the work of Goldin. Her work is driven by a pulse and affect that are well beyond the question of morals. It is about survival, the desire to understand the other, empathy and memory. Goldin describes her technique, saying: "I photograph directly from life. These images are born of the relationship, not from observation". Other times she has said that, "this is something that has to do with trying to feel what the other feels ".
The accumulation, the duration, the songs that accompany these images (chosen by Nan Goldin herself), regular reorganization of the slide-show (the artist constantly changes the order of images of the Balad over time, adding and removing pictures, changing their order of appearance, etc.) are all crucial elements for understanding the link between art and life that makes Goldin's work so singular and so powerful. These elements reflect a desire that is shown time and time again to write a story; first, her story and those of her friends, and then, perhaps unwittingly, the story of a period of time - mainly the 70s and 80s. Today, Nan Goldin’s Balad enables the viewer to see and deeply feel the emotional, physical and psychological consequences of the terrible AIDS epidemic that decimated her adoptive family; miraculously, she escaped it, but was left alone, on the brink of an abyss.
From the late 80s, again following the path of an artist’s life and beginning rehab, the photography of Goldin changed: brighter (she discovered daylight where before she only had night), more contemplative, more serene. Goldin opened up to new horizons, especially in Asia where she worked with Araki. Other slide shows were to emerge, including All by myself in 1994, which retraced her six year battle to overcome addiction.
If the form ch
anges, the style remains. The urgency to fight against disappearance persists, the urgency of love and memory persists. The snapshot retains its nodal place in Goldin's work, with all that this mode of shooting implies in proximity, availability of the world, responsiveness and intuition. Everything that Nan Goldin instinctively possesses because it is her and her life that make this work of art unique.
AFL
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