American Masters

Nan Goldin

Goldin was raised in an intellectual Jewish family in Maryland. Her older sister, Barbara, was intermittently institutionalised as a teenager and committed suicide when Goldin was 11. Three years later she left home, living in communes and foster homes, and attended an alternate school in Lincoln, Massachusetts. At this time, she became interested in photography, initially using a Polaroid camera. Goldin took courses at the New England School of Photography, where she was introduced to and inspired by the work of Larry Clark, who had documented himself and his friends shooting up and having sex in the 1960s. In 1974 she enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where she started working with a Pentax, using a wide-angle lens, a flash and slide film to produce work that had a distinct feel: seemingly intimate and ad hoc, with lighting, focus and a sense of colour that was closer to the aesthetic of snapshots than ‘art photography’.

Nan Goldin’s diaristic photographs recording the deeply personal experiences of her friends and lovers—her chosen family—are marked by an often moving sense of intimacy. This is suggested in the way her camera intrudes into the physical, emotional and psychic space of her subject—giving rise to an uncomfortable viewing experience that can walk the line between voyeurism and empathy.

Anne O’Hehir

See more works by this artist in the NGA collection

Nan Goldin Nan one month after being battered 1984 © Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery Purchased 1994 Learn more

Nan Goldin Philippe H. and Suzanne kissing at Euthanasia, NYC 1981 © Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery Purchased 1994 Learn more