Nan Goldin

Continuing in the mini series I seem to have started of photographers who influence and inspire me, I decided to feature Nan Goldin.

"Upon moving to New York City, Goldin began documentary photography of the post-punk new-wave music scene, and the city's vibrant gay subculture in the late 1970's and early 1980's. gradually being drawn in to the Bowery's hard drug subculture. These photographs, taken from 1979 to 1986, form her famous work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.The snapshot aesthetic images depict drug use, violent, aggressive couples and autobiographical moments. Most of her Ballad subjects were dead by the 1990s due to either drug overdoses or AIDS, including close friends and often photographed subjects, Cookie Mueller and Greer Lankton. In addition to the Ballad she combined her pictures in two other series I'll Be Your Mirror and All by Myself."
"Nan Goldin's photographs, which pre-date the 'heroin chic' advertising craze of the 1990s, are forthright studies of herself and friends, engrossed in New York's East Village subculture in the early 80s."