A Nan Goldin retrospective that leaves you perplexed

Paris. In 2022, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm inaugurated the retrospective “Nan Goldin. This Will Not End Well” designed by Fredrik Liew, director of exhibitions and collections at the museum, while architect Hala Wardé designed the scenography. The point: “Present the photographer’s work as a filmmaker through her slideshows and videos. » Since March 18, this same retrospective of Nan Goldin (born in 1953, Washington, DC) which can be seen at the Grand Palais and at the Saint-Louis de la Pitié-Salpêtrière chapel questions both form and content.

In the salon d’Honneur of the Grand Palais, plunged into darkness, the arrangement of the five “pavilions”, which each serve as a projection room, lacks clarity both literally and figuratively. Certainly, each pavilion has its own slideshow, video or sound installation, all of which benefit from high viewing quality. But the non-chronological distribution of the works makes Goldin’s itinerary difficult to understand. This one is successful from the slideshow The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1981-2022), his first work, then his narration, constructed from raw, tender and violent images of his intimate life and those of his friends, has continued to develop on the same theme and on the same principle of a soundtrack composed of pieces from the 1960s-1970s. To locate it and begin reading or rereading it, it is best to first refer to the visit booklet and the room plan distributed at the entrance to the exhibition. The slideshow is projected in its most current version, incorporating new images taken from its archives, as is the case for two other of its great classics: The Other Side (1992-2021) and Sisters, Saints, Sibyls (2004-2022). The latter is projected in the Saint-Louis chapel, because it was designed for these spaces by the photographer as part of the 2004 Autumn Festival.

The Boston School

If these works have lost none of their force, the cartels which accompany them appear to be very succinct. The cartel but also the end credits The Ballad of Sexual Dependency thus ignore the history of its diffusion, in particular in 1987 at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival, then directed by François Hébel. Lasting 42 minutes, the autobiographical visual story of the photographer, aged 34 at the time and unknown in Europe, moved, shocked and divided the public; its screening marked the beginning of stardom for Nan Goldin.

We will also not find any information on the director David Sherman whose name regularly appears associated with his in his slideshows and videos. It would have been interesting to know his role. Generally speaking, the contextualization of the artist’s artistic journey is sorely lacking and disturbing. Because Nan Goldin was not the first to photograph her life. In the United States, Larry Clark and Duane Michals preceded her, and her first intimate photographs cannot be dissociated from the group called the “Boston school” that she formed with David Armstrong, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Gail Thacker, Mark Morrisroe and Jack Pierson, met during their studies at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston in the 1970s. Last summer, the “David Armstrong” retrospective at Luma Arles recalled this story common.

Nan Goldin the activist

The route struggles to show the evolution of the work. The visitor may sense a repetitive aspect in the subjects and form of recent works. Stendhal Syndromea slideshow from 2024, offering a comparison of images of masterpieces of art with portraits of loved ones, unfortunately leaves the viewer wanting more. As for Gaza, Notes a genocidea film in progress constructed from film sequences retrieved from the Internet, although it reflects the artist’s indignation, does not necessarily make a work of it, like Chris Marker’s films on the conflicts and uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s in their time. Because it is more the voice of Nan Goldin as an activist rather than that of the artist which shines through in this film. Absent from the exhibition, All the beauty and bloodshed (2022), directed by the American documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras retracing the photographer’s fight against opioids, would however have made it possible to better understand the particularity of Gaza, Notes a genocide.