Nan Goldin's Visual Diary

American photo artist Nan Goldin is best known for her work "Ballad of Sexual Dependency." It's a series of diary photographs. Personal stories of painful, joyful, and bitter moments form the bulk of Goldin's narrative.

Nan Goldin was not yet 12 when her older 18-year-old sister committed suicide. According to the psychiatrist who examined Nan, she was at risk of the same fate; however, the girl broke the "family curse": at 14, she ran away from home and plunged into a world whose main components were sex, alcohol, and drugs.





Nan took her first photographs at her sister's funeral. She later recalled that these images were a means of self-identification, a way of understanding her place between life and death. After leaving home, she photographed her surroundings: drug addicts, transvestites, homosexuals, and other representatives of the "bohemian" world. She photographed (and continues to photograph) in a style known as "raw insider" (raw - unprocessed; insider - insider, not stranger); in other words, like an amateur photographer who prefers unstaged shots for a family album.



"My desire was to preserve every moment of my life, to preserve the feeling of every person I loved," she later wrote. "I want to show my world as truthfully as possible, without idealizing or embellishing it."



In 1986, Nan Goldin published The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, which was a resounding success and placed the author among the best photographers of the 20th century. This was the first visual diary in the history of photography—a chronicle of Nan's sexual and everyday life. Not every "family photo album" receives such an honor, but Nan Goldin's "family" and the forbidden fruit with which her works are simply saturated found immensely appealing to American, and later, international, audiences.

We are publishing scanned photographs from a book published by Phaidon, which features Goldin's best shots with commentary by Guido Costa.



Two in a Bed, Chicago, USA, 1977

Goldin often witnessed very intimate moments in the lives of her close friends. This photograph seems to express Nan's perception of the peculiar estrangement that often occurs between a man and a woman after sex. Intimacy often involves a great distance—a paradox that Goldin explored in her most famous work, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency."



Smoky Car, New Hampshire, USA, 1979



Trixie on a Folding Bed, New York, USA, 1979

Among the party photographs scattered throughout "Ballad" as a leitmotif, this is undoubtedly one of the most memorable. Loneliness in a crowd and sadness as the inevitable antithesis of intoxication are hallmarks of this period of Goldin's work, combining a fascination with communal life with a focus on individual lives.



Cookie at Tin Pan Alley, New York, USA, 1983

Cookie Mueller—an actress, poet, and cultural activist in the New York underground scene of the early 1980s—was Nan's close friend for many years, her muse, and her guru. This photograph is part of the famous Cookie series, in which Nan tells her friend's story, from their first meeting in Provincetown in 1976 to her death from AIDS in November 1989. Here, Cookie is at Tin Pan Alley, the club where Goldin worked for a time as a bartender and where she often presented her early work in slideshow format.



Kat in the bathtub, Berlin, Germany, 1984

Kat was a musician whom Goldin met during her first stay in Germany.



Nan a month after being beaten, New York, USA, 1984.

This photo shows the aftermath of Goldin's turbulent relationship with her boyfriend, Brian, and is one of her most ruthless self-portraits. The injuries she sustained nearly cost her the sight in her left eye. From the point of view of the symbolism of “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” this photograph marks the end of a beautiful dream and the beginning of a period of complete transformation.

"When you capture such terrible moments, you can't say they didn't happen: the photograph is proof. Many women who saw this series thanked me. Although many still return to their lovers who treated them terribly."



Cookie and Vittorio's wedding, New York, USA, 1986

In 1986, Cookie married Vittorio Scarpati, a Neapolitan artist living in New York. It was Vittorio who introduced Goldin to the free-spirited world of Positano, a small town on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, where they spent part of the summer together. Vittorio also died of AIDS in 1989, though a few months before Cookie. Nan included some of these images not only in her photo series about Cookie but also in the first section of her 1998 book, "Naples: Ten Years Later."



Sharon tending to Cookie in bed, Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA, 1989

Like Cookie, Sharon was a frequent subject of Goldin's photographs for many years. Her masculine beauty often served as the perfect counterpoint to Cookie's feminine sensuality. This photograph captures the former lovers and friends at a tragic moment, marked by the progression of the disease that would shorten Cookie's life in a matter of months. It was Sharon who became Cookie's caregiver when she could no longer even speak. This despite the photograph on the wall depicting Cookie's wedding to a man after eight years of love with Sharon.



Cookie at Vittorio's coffin, New York, USA, 1989

The deaths of Vittorio and Cookie, within months of each other, affected Goldin so deeply that they prompted a fundamental change in the way she photographed and marked the beginning of a more thoughtful approach to her work. This photograph of Vittorio's funeral feels like a final act of love for her deceased friends.



Siobhan in the shower, New York, USA, 1991

Some of Nan Goldin's most beautiful and tender photographs are dedicated to Siobhan, her friend and partner for several years in the early 1990s. They are a tribute to the love between women.



Gina during dinner at Bruce's, New York, USA, 1991

Goldin and her friends, including Gina, used Bruce's house for dinner, during which the photographer showed her slides to everyone in attendance. In this photo, Gina is waiting for a second helping of cutlets.



Jimmy Paulette and Taboo! in the bathroom, New York, USA, 1991

Jimmy Paulette, Taboo! , Cody, Misty, Guy, and other drag queens were the most famous subjects of Nan Goldin's photographs, taken in New York, Paris, and Berlin between 1990 and 1992. This shot, chosen as the cover for the book "The Other Side," is among Goldin's most popular images.



Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, New York, USA, 1991

Goldin's political views led her to participate in initiatives and demonstrations for the gay community and people with AIDS. This photo, taken on the way to the 1991 New York Pride Parade, is one of Nan's most widely circulated images.



Gilles and Gotcho's embrace, Paris, France, 1992

Along with the Cookie series, the photo story of Gilles and Gotcho's relationship is undoubtedly one of Nan's most touching and somber projects. Gilles, the owner of the Paris gallery where Goldin exhibited, was one of the first to support her work. He died of AIDS in 1992. With great compassion, Nan describes the final months of his life, from the onset of the disease to his death in the hospital. Gotcho, his partner, was always by his side.



Gotcho kissing Gilles, Paris, France, 1993.

The tenderness of this final farewell is highlighted by the contrast between the two men, one ravaged by illness and the other in robust physical health.



Lil laughing, Swampscott, Massachusetts, USA, 1996.

Lilian is Goldin's mother, and Goldin photographed her in various situations over the years, alone and with her husband. This photograph, in which Lil appears particularly happy, is part of a longer series of shots in informal, domestic settings.



Joan with Valerie and Rain in a mirror, Paris, France, 1999.

The series to which this image belongs (originally intended for the French newspaper Libération) marks the beginning of what can be considered Goldin's "Paris period."



Laughing Joan, Paris, France, 1999.

Joan, a young French opera singer, was one of Goldin's favorite subjects at the turn of the century. Nan had always been fascinated by the grammar of feminine beauty and found in Joan the perfect example of seductive power.



Joan and Aurel kissing in Nan's apartment in New York City, USA, 1999.

Sexuality has always been a dominant theme in Goldin's work. But this photograph, taken in Nan's apartment, has a certain formal composition that is not noticeable in other Nan photographs of the same genre, such as those from "Ballad."



Nan Goldin. Photo by David Armstrong, 2000.

In 2007, Nan received the Hasselblad Award, one of the most prestigious photography awards. In the 2000s, after many years of photographing adults, Goldin focused her attention on children. She primarily photographed her godchildren and the children of friends.

"I don't remember ever feeling anything more elevated than I do now. I guess it's because photographs of children evoke memories," she says.

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