Nan Goldin
In her very personal and intimate portraits the photographer Nan Goldin uses motifs from the themes of sex, drugs, violence and death. She directly and ruthlessly documents the consequences of drug abuse, physical abuse and diseases like AIDS. In the early years her work is primarily related to the fashion photography by Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. From the late 1970s it furthermore shows references to the fine-art photography of Diane Arbus, Larry Clark and August Sander.
From 1974 to 1978 Nan Goldin (*1953, Washington D.C.) studied at the School of Museum Fine Arts in Boston. She achieved international fame with her work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1980-1986). In about 800 photographs that she presents like a slide show with music in the background she records her life in the subculture of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals in New York during the 1980s. Today Nan Goldin lives and works in New York, Paris and London.
