Skip to navigation Skip to main content

Nan Goldin

American photographer Nan Goldin (b. 1953, Washington, D.C.) is known for taking photographs of her intimate circle of friends – members of the cultural underground scene in Boston, New York or Berlin. Working in a documentary style and with the aesthetics of the snapshot, Goldin has made portraits of artists, gays, drag queens, transvestites, drug addicts, as well as self-portraits. Her images reveal an immediacy and emotional proximity that made them emblematic of the 1980s, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and of Berlin before the fall of the Wall in 1989. The photographs Käthe in the tub, West Berlin (1984) and Jimmy Paulette and Tabboo! undressing, NYC (1991) are characteristic of Goldin’s way of approaching her models – with great sensitivity in intimate moments. For Goldin, photography becomes a tool for questioning the self through the other.

Artworks

  1. Nan Goldin Käthe in the Tub, West Berlin, 1984

    Cibachrome
    69,5 x 101,6 cm
    Collection Mudam Luxembourg
    Acquisition 1997 – Apport FOCUNA
    © Photo : Rémi Villaggi | Mudam Luxembourg

  1. Nan Goldin Jimmy Paulette and Tabboo! undressing, NYC, 1991

    Cibachrome
    101,6 x 69,5 cm
    Collection Mudam Luxembourg
    Acquisition 1997 – Apport FOCUNA
    © Photo : Rémi Villaggi | Mudam Luxembourg

  1. Nan Goldin, "Dressing room at I.C, Manila", 1992. Collection Mudam Luxembourg © Nan Goldin
    Nan Goldin Dressing room at I.C., Manila, 1992

    Cibachrome
    104 x 71,5 cm
    Collection Mudam Luxembourg
    Acquisition 2013
    © Nan Goldin

The most important collection of contemporary art in Luxembourg Explore the Mudam Collection