Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin's seminal second book The Other Side is finally back in print. Ever since the early 1970's Goldin has lived with and among drag queens, documenting both their glamour and their struggles. The Other Side is her very personal declaration of love and gratitude to these drag queens, who showed her a way out of the captivity of pre-packaged, socially prescribed identity. As she put it: "The pictures in this book are not of people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender show more euphoria.... The people in these pictures are truly revolutionary; they are the real winners in the battle of the sexes because they have stepped out of the ring." In contrast to much of the early 90's drag queen mania, The Other Side has brilliantly passed the test of time: Goldin's photographs are as beautiful, moving, and vibrant as ever, heralding the utopian promises of a world where gender has stopped being a prison-a vision that remains as vital and acute as it was when the book was first published. show less

I should preface this reviewlet with a little surgeon general's warning: I know jack about photography. Never taken a class in it, don't often buy books about it, have a very basic little digicam, and I've never really covered much photography in my art history classes either (I think I was comatose on the floor the day we went over it in Ms. Brittle's class or else absent on a "sick day".) That being said, I absolutely love Nan Goldin's work. She is one of the few photographers whose prints show more I would love having on my wall. She doesn't have many cheesy shots of decrepit trees or nymphettes wearing pearls and looking over their shoulders and shit; instead Goldin is a master at capturing relationships between people. In that respect, she reminds me a lot of David Hockney's portraiture. Goldin reveals moments of tenderness, sensuality, and brutality, often in the same image. She is famous for her images of couples from different walks of life, and rightly so: these are outstanding. Goldin was also one of the few photographers to cover the sad introitus of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s from the ground; many of her closest friends fell victim to the virus. Goldin's photographs at this period are heartbreaking--somehow melancholic in their stoicism and extremely visceral. You feel like you're in the room with the people standing over their friend's hospital bed, and you can almost smell the sickness on his breath as he lays dying. These images are now decades old, but they convey an immediacy that I've seldom seen in such an emotionally heavy subject matter. I recommend Nan Goldin's work to anyone--whether you're interested in photography, or, like me, are an idiot about photography and are open to something new and inspiring. show less

Reissued to coincide with a career retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, Nan Goldin’s Sisters, Saints and Sibyls is a deeply personal exploration of female trauma and resistance.

One of Nan Goldin’s most important series, this timely publication is set to align with a major career retrospective opening at the Grand Palais, Paris, in March 2026. Focusing on the life of her sister Barbara, Goldin brings together hospital reports, family snapshots, and her own photographs to construct show more a visual tapestry exploring addiction, abuse, trauma, and female resistance. Sisters, Saints and Sibyls stands, as Goldin herself notes, as “a tribute to my sister and to all rebellious women struggling to survive in society.”

Barbara Goldin was born in May 1946, to Lillian Kantrovitz and Hyman Howard Goldin. At the age of twelve, she was sent to a psychiatric detention facility. Condemned for her defiant and sexually provocative attitude, Barbara spent the next six years in various facilities, before taking her own life in 1965, at the age of eighteen.

Sisters, Saints and Sibyls unflinchingly reveals the tragic story of Barbara’s life, using medical records and family photographs, alongside mythical illusions to Saint Barbara, to compose a haunting meditation on the broader mistreatment of female mental health in the twentieth century.

Barbara’s story is intertwined with Goldin’s own descent into, and emergence from, addiction. Bringing the moments considered too shameful by others to the front of the page, Sisters, Saints and Sibyls is a liberatory experience, shining a light on the reality of addiction and trauma.

This publication is set to stand as the definitive edition of one of Goldin’s most important works.
Nan Goldin (b. 1953) is a renowned American photographer known for her intimate, diaristic images that explore love, identity, addiction, and the LGBTQ+ community. Goldin has exhibited widely, with key shows at MoMA, Gagosian, and Moderna Museet. Previous publications include The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986), The Devil’s Playground (2003), and Sisters, Saints and Sibyls (2005). show less

A photobook classic, and perhaps the work for which New York photographer Nan Goldin remains best known, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a visual diary chronicling the struggle for intimacy and understanding between friends and lovers collectively described by Goldin as her “tribe.” Her work describes a late 1970s/early 1980s New York now long gone, and a world that is visceral and seething with life. As Goldin writes: “Real memory, which these pictures trigger, is an invocation of show more the color, smell, sound, and physical presence, the density and flavor of life.” show less