Biography

Nan Goldin (b. 1953) is considered one of the most influential documentary photographers of the late twentieth century. She grew up in Boston. After her sister’s suicide in 1965, she took up photography in order to keep her memories alive forever. After completing studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, she moved on to color photography. In 1974, Nan Goldin produced her first exhibition project at the university in Cambridge. Goldin graduated in 1977, and one year later she moved to New York. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Goldin’s main motifs for her photographs were her circle of friends, who were very important to her and who she regarded as a substitute for her family. In 1988, Goldin had to go through drug rehabilitation, during which she started a series of self-portraits that clearly reflect her intense emotional experience of the situation. The loss of several friends due to AIDS infections during the early 1990s led Goldin to focus in her subsequent work on other people. On invitation from the DAAD, Nan Goldin spent one year in Berlin. In 1995, her work was exhibited alongside other artist colleagues as part of the new “Boston School” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Just one year later, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York hosted a retrospective exhibition of the photographer’s works. Goldin lives and works in Paris.