This article comes from Allergic’s 2024 Pride Month series, interviewing queer and trans elders in the arts community throughout June.
How bold is this? I took these photos of Nan Goldin on a cracked iPhone 13 — in the privacy of her home. But somehow, the brilliant photographer allowed me to take her photos during a recent interview in her New York apartment, even though she had reason to be wary.
I took a low-light shot of her playing with a cat; another of her sitting on the edge of a bed, smiling shyly at the camera, with a bunch of Peter Hujars paintings in the background. I took a few more photos Her studio and living room are filled with art, books, awards and memorabilia from her decades-long illustrious career.
Goldin rose to prominence in the 1980s as a chronicler, witness and participant in the LGBTQ+ community in Boston, New York, Berlin and beyond. She lived through the painful height of the AIDS epidemic, during which she lost many friends and loved ones. Her autobiographical, anamorphic slides this Song of Sexual Dependence (First exhibited in The 1985 Whitney Biennial documented these times. Around 2018, after recovering from a life-threatening addiction to OxyContin, she began a crusade against the Sackler family, makers of the deadly drug, through Purdue Pharma. After years of protesting with her activist group Prescription Addiction Intervention (PAIN), she successfully put pressure on major museums around the world—including the Met and Guggenheim in New York, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and Serpentine Galleries, as well as Paris’ Louvre Museum – rejected the Sacklers’ art-laundering gifts and scrubbed their names from their walls. These chapters of Goldin’s life are documented in her slideshow Amnesia (2019–2021) and Laura Poitras’s 2022 award-winning documentary All the beauty and blood.
I met the intriguing and youthful Goldin at her Brooklyn home, where she generously shared her time and wisdom with me. Here are highlights from our conversation.
Oh, and you won’t see any iPhones The photos I described earlier. Nan hated them.
* * *
allergy: What are you working on lately?
Nan Goldin: I’m working on a new work for a show in September, but I have no idea what it is. I’ll let the material tell me what it’s about. That’s what I do. I did another work in the Louvre a few years ago that was about Stendhal syndrome and the breakdown in the face of too much beauty.
H: Watch your movie All the beauty and blood It taught me a lot about your life and made me realize what a great photographer you are. What are your eyes looking for these days? Are they looking for anything?
of: I look for things that I find beautiful. I look for things that… move me. And then I decide if they are good photographs.
Looking back, what happened in the 80s was that nobody else was taking pictures at the time. It wasn’t because I was a particularly good photographer, it was because nobody else was taking pictures at the time.
H: Particularly in the drag community of 1970s Boston and 1980s New York. How did you gain the trust of these subjects?
of: They are not subjects. They are my friends. I live with them.
H: As someone holding a camera, don’t you feel like an outsider?
of: I think so, in a way. But it’s a symbiotic relationship. I love them very much, I adore them. Maybe I’m an outsider because I admire them very much, but I don’t go there to take pictures. I go there first, and then I take pictures.
H: That’s what makes them so good.
of: Because at that time all I was after was beauty and tenderness. Other people came in wanting to photograph “drag queens.” The people I photographed were nothing to me; they were my friends, and I thought they were the most beautiful people in the world.
I used to take my film to the drugstore to be developed and I would take those little 2 x 5 inch snapshots. They would look through them and if they didn’t like them, they would tear them out. They would put them in a pile to see who had the most. So I guess I was their photographer, but they were not my subjects.
H: There is a sense of empathy in your work. This empathy you describe must be tied to your artistic intuition. Are there things you only know by taking a photo or filming them?
of: Oh, yes, of course. The work has taught me a lot. There are even ghosts in my photos. I like magic. I like photos that are messed up, that are not good photos, but that reveal something beneath the surface. Photography keeps me in touch with things.
I was curious most of the time, but I find that trait has faded. I don’t go online to learn about people. I don’t Google anyone. I only learn about people when they are in front of me.
But I’m not that interested in photography anymore.
H: Aren’t you? That’s the title.
of: I was never a big fan of photography. Now I like and respect it more and more, but I always wanted to be a filmmaker.
Photography is restricted. Slideshow below Amnesia This is the most important thing to me, and Ballad of Sexual DependenceI make these slideshows from thousands of photos in my archive. Now I’m also making a film.
H: So your future is still ahead.
of: Exactly.
H: You are only 70 years old, still very young.
of: No, it isn’t. In what world is it considered young? [laughing]
H: In today’s world. I don’t know if you’ve checked online lately, but 70 is the new 50, or something..
of: I have acupuncture and Pilates to thank for that…and my innocence.
H: You have a lot of young fans. Can you give them some advice to help them find courage?
of: I would tell them to put their phones down. The real world still exists. I would tell them to live their sexuality. My friends paved the way for them. I would tell them to find something worth fighting for. My fight right now is for Palestinian freedom.
H: There is a dark humor lurking in your character, but underneath it lies an eternal optimism.
of: Is there optimism?
H: I mean strength, and optimism that change is possible..
of: Today I don’t really understand that anymore, but I guess it’s true, otherwise I wouldn’t be going on, right?
When you get to my age, all of a sudden you’re facing mortality. I live in a loft apartment with my cats, and I go to the park to feed the birds. I’m a perfect old-timer. I’m proud of it. I can’t believe it, but I’m here and it feels great.
