Nan Goldin

4th floor, 1 February - 13 April

Nan Goldin (b. 1953) made her breakthrough in the 1980s with photographs which gave an individual and political face to the New York ‘underworld' of the time, overshadowed by drugs and AIDS and breaking down the barriers of sexuality.

Consistently, Goldin has photographed herself and the extended family of her friends throughout the decades and different life situations, from USA to Europe and Far East. In her pictures and series the private moments grow into biographies that expand and become the history of a whole generation, different sub-cultures, sexual identities, women and gender minorities and changing social atmosphere.

She doesn't present a gallery of stereotypes or freaks, but portraits of her beloved. The images convey the trust between the photographer and her targets as the most intimate moments are opened to the public gaze. People in the pictures grow old, build identities, some become ill and die, some stay and live on.

In her passionate and uncompromising subjectivism, however, Nan Goldin is in a class of her own: she is an inseparable part of the world she depicts and its intimate situations, not merely an outside observer.

-Taru Tappola