Nan Goldein
Born in America, and started her journey with photography whilst being a teenager. Her first work based on New York City drag queens mostly in black and white were published around the city and many people began to recognise Goldein and her amazing talent to photography. Going through her hard teenager years, Goldein was moved by the amount of friends that were dying around her from AIDS. After experiencing death all around her she began her long and successful journey with photography.
Many of her work,publishd in museums and art galleries were praised, as she began to present them on slideshows. Her most famous piece of work Tokyo Love: Spring Fever 1994 where Nan worked with a famous Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki.
Due to the fact she was so successful she worked with the British filmmaker Edmund Coulthard to create a film about her life and work called I'll Be Your Mirror.
A lot of her work based on children and sexuality. As well as abusing drugs as a teenagers she always knew she wanted to be a photographer, and therefore followed her dream. A lot of her work are based on children as she says there ‘so beautiful it hurts’. Many of those children photographed are children of her close friends who were lucky enough, just like Goldein to survive the hard drugs addictions.
Since then she has lived in New York, Bangkok, Berlin, Tokyo and Paris, amassing an extensive body of work that represents a fascinating photographic portrait of our time. As well as that her 'snapshot' images of her friends –drag queens, drug addicts, lovers and family– are intense, searing portraits that, together, make a document of her life.
The reason I like her work and it inspires me it’s because it’s different. Its creepy and its shows that sexuality and drugs have no strong effect on how successful someone is if they have talent. Her strong work creates tension and make people feel uncomfortable which I find interesting
