Citations Ed. 11 - Nan Goldin

The photography of Nan Goldin (b. 1953) is seminal to the development of fashion photography as a mode of social critique. Born to a middle-class family in the Washington D.C. suburbs, the suicide of her older sister has often been cited as a formative influence on her affect and approach as a photographer. At the onset of the counterculture movements of the 1960s, Goldin attributes her sister's death to a combination of sex- and gender-based biases that she went on to challenge with her empathetic, diaristic work in her career.

Her earliest work were commercial fashion photographic attempts that emulated French and Italian Vogue spreads, but quickly developed after she encountered Larry Clark's Tulsa,  famous for its autobiographical bend that challenged prevailing American stereotypes about family and country. Its images of sex and drugs among disaffected teenagers was influential for Goldin. When she moved to New York City, she found belonging among the city’s own outcasts in the post-punk scene, and most comfortably with the gay and transgender communities in downtown Manhattan.  Here she immersed herself with the drag queens, training her camera to be less interested in than admired with them. They were glorified and empowered, depicted in their full vulnerability and the range of their expressions.

Part of that vulnerability included the drug and drink that circulated among them. Goldin's candid and celebratory style is often credited, however unfairly, with romanticizing destructive lifestyle choices that would become known as "heroin chic." But Goldin's work is complex and contradictory, not hypocritical. Her love and care for drag queens anticipate today's more accepted attitudes about sexual identities; she saw queer as a " third gender," not a pathological condition. This is nowhere better articulated than 1993's The Other Side.

Republished in 2023 with a revised introduction, the book tracks a twenty-year period of living among drag queens, from the 1970s punk era through the 1990s HIV/AIDS crisis. They are photographed at parties, parades, and pageants; at parks with friends, and at home on couches. They are depicted simply living their lives, for whose supposed crimes were simply a desire to exist with full proprietary over their choices. The Other Side is a celebration of lives lived against social, economic, cultural, and personal unjustified external pressures and impositions, finding some freedom and community in spite of it all.

Much of Goldin's career has advocated for the neglected and persecuted, and that continued into the 21st century. In 2000, she became addicted to prescription opioids while recovering from an injured wrist. Her addiction was so severe that she sold original copies of her books to purchase OxyContin on the black market after her doctors refused to refill her prescriptions. The experience inspired her to start Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.), an advocacy organization that campaigns against the Sackler family, who was responsible for the manufacture, promotion, and distribution of OxyContin. The group staged several high-profile protests -- with Goldin herself withdrawing work -- at cultural institutions who'd received money from the Sacklers, such as the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many went on to denounce the Sacklers and returned endowments and donations.

While Goldin’s work ought to raise important questions about the exploitation and glamorization of the down-trodden and under served, it should also be championed for its affectionate and empathetic focus. The images in The Other Side are not powerful for only their style and form, but for their tenderness and care.