Photo: team art in berlin / CC BY-SA 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Nan Goldin essentially invented the visual language that half of Instagram now imitates without knowing it, the snapshot aesthetic that treats your own life and chosen family as worthy of high art. 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency' is unflinching, tender, and devastating, especially watching it shadowed by the AIDS crisis that took so many of her subjects. What elevates her beyond the photographs, for me, is her refusal to stay quiet: her P.A.I.N. activism against the Sacklers, documented in 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed', proves she'll point the same fearless lens at power itself. A genuinely fearless artist.
Overview
Nan Goldin (born September 12, 1953) is an American photographer and activist, born in Washington, D.C. She is best known for 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency', an intimate, diaristic slideshow documenting her circle of friends, lovers, and the subcultures of late-1970s and 1980s New York. A recipient of the Hasselblad Award and named to the Time 100, she later became a prominent activist through her group P.A.I.N., targeting the Sackler family over the opioid crisis, a campaign chronicled in the Oscar-nominated documentary 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed'.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Nan Goldin
- Name (Japanese)
- ナン・ゴールディン
- Reading
- なん・ごーるでぃん
- Born
- September 12, 1953 (age 72)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Virgo / Snake
- Origin
- Washington, D.C., United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- Photographer / Printmaker / Multimedia artist / Film director / Documentarian
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Tufts University
Awards & achievements
- 2006 Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters
- 2007 Hasselblad Award
- 2014 Lucie Award
- 2022 Time 100
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Photographer — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.