Following her graduation from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Goldin began documenting the post-punk new-wave music scene, along with the city’s vibrant, post-Stonewall gay subculture of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Most of Goldin’s works depict drug use, violent, aggressive couples and autobiographical moments. One of her famous works in this respect is ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’.
Goldin’s work is most often presented in the form of a slide show and her work’s have been presented at film festivals. The main themes of her early pictures are love, gender, domesticity and sexuality, usually shot with available light. However, since the late 1960’s, Goldin has worked on an evolving body of work that builds upon the informal, content driven aesthetic of the snapshot. Goldin’s photographs are known to invite the viewers inside the private dramas of people and situations normally considered to be on the outer reaches of social acceptability. The emotional states of Goldin’s subjects are visually intensified by her focus on the interior spaces, lush color and theatrical lighting. An interesting fact about her photographs is that the subjects appear not as objects of a distant gaze, but as friends grown used to the camera’s inevitable presence. The most striking factor in Goldin’s photographs is the sense of intimacy and informality.
In 2007, Nan Goldin was the prestigious recipient of the Hasselblad Award. She has also had a film based on her life and work, going by the name of ‘High Art’, in which actress Ally Sheedy played the character of Lucy Berliner, representing Goldin.
Some of Goldin’s other famous works include:
- The Other Side
- Greer and Robert on Bed
- I’ll be Your Mirror
- French Chris on the Convertible
