American photographer Nan Goldin is renowned for her candid explorations of intimacy and subculture. Her new series as part of exhibition Memory Lost, documents her own personal life during quarantine.
Nan Goldin is one of the foremost photographers of our time. Since the early 1970s, she has consistently captured and championed the queer community through art and advocacy. Whether photographing drag queens, the aids epidemic or the opioid crisis, her work springs from the underground, immersing each of her subjects in her signature golden light.
Goldin’s new exhibition Memory Lost is showing at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York. Old and new projects will be on display. Notable past series include Sirens, a mythological found-footage film, and an untitled collection of wide skies and landscapes. The titular Memory Lost chronicles Goldin’s battles with addiction, anchored within the ongoing opioid crisis in the US. Her work is typically expansive, immortalising a broad array of countercultures and lifestyles.
However, all photographs from her latest, untitled, series were taken within Goldin’s own apartment during quarantine. The images give viewers a unique insight in the photographer’s daily life. The subject throughout is Goldin’s friend Thora Siemsen.
Goldin told The New York Times,
“I was very lucky Thora came into my life when she did. I hadn’t photographed a person in years. I was more inspired by the sky, or by going into my archive of tens of thousands of slides to make new pieces.”
The Other Side
In exciting news, the show also includes one of the artist’s most iconic projects. The Other Side put the lives and experiences of Goldin’s gender non-conforming and transgender friends front and centre, at a time when positive representation was even more scarce. Taken between 1972 and 2010, the images are tender portraits that capture the humanity, vulnerability and the glamour of the LGBTQ+ community.
“[The Other Side] is a record of the courage of the people who transformed that landscape to allow trans people the freedom of now,
“It’s important for them to know they’re not alone, and to know how they got here.”
Source: anOther Magazine
Check out some of the images from the exhibition below:
You can catch Memory Lost from April 27 – June 12 at the Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
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