Nan Goldin

NAN GOLDIN (Wahington D.C., 1953).
"C and So competing for the Oscar, Second Tip, Bangkok," 1992.
Photograph.
With labels on the back.
Measurements: 15 x 15 cm.

The work in bidding portrays "ladyboys" in Bangkok in the 1990s and reflects on the transgender rights movement. About the situation Nan Goldin reflects: "The transgender rights movement has been crucial in the street protests. I feel fortunate to have lived long enough to witness this sea change in the visibility and acceptance of trans people in our culture. In the early 1990s, I traveled to Bangkok to photograph the world of the queens known as ladyboys. Second Tip was their home and sanctuary. Every week, they held beauty pageants with lavish production, sporting ballerina outfits and lip-syncing Madonna. I wonder how the current movement would have affected their lives."

Originally, proceeds from the sale of this print would go to P.A.I.N. (Prescription Drug Addiction Intervention). P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) is an activist group founded by Nan Goldin, focused on exposing and holding the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma accountable for their role in the opioid crisis.

Nan Goldin is born into a family of Jewish descent in Washington, D. C., but grows up among several adoptive families in different New England towns after her sister commits suicide. As a teenager, Goldin begins to frequent the Provincetown community, a Massachusetts vacation destination popular with gays on the East Coast. There, the artist met those who would become the inhabitants and protagonists of her photographs for the next 20 years: Bruce, Sharon, Cookie, Waters.... Later, she settled in the Bowery neighborhood in Manhattan, where she encountered the outbreak of punk. In New York, the photographer found the great theme of her work: the narration of the sentimental and sexual life of this environment. Goldin, in fact, describes herself as a "documentary photographer". In 1992 she exhibited at the Matteu Marks Gallery and her work was the subject of two major traveling retrospectives: one organized in 1996 by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the other, in 2001, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. Exhibitions include the slide and video presentation Sisters, Saints & Sibyls at La Chapelle de la Salpêtrière, Paris, contributions to Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2009, in 2006 she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor. Subsequently she exhibits "scopophilia", which is part of the special program in 2011 of Patrice Chéreau at the Louvre. The MacDowell Colony awards Nan Goldin the Edward MacDowell Medal for her lifelong vision and creativity. In the same year she mounts an exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. Her last published book was The Beautiful Smile in 2007, year in which she received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award for her work.