Ten Years After: Naples 1986-1996

by Nan Goldin, Guido Gosta

On a trip to Naples, Goldin made portraits of the city and acquaintances she made during her stay. Ten years later, after the success of her mid-life retrospective, I'll Be Your Mirror, she went back and was inspired to make new pictures. The story of these two visits is told in this mixture of intimate and affectionate portraits and studies of the landscapes and architecture.

Genres: Photography, Art, Art and Photography

136 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1998

About the author

Nan Goldin is an American photographer known for her deeply personal and candid portraiture. Goldin’s intimate images act as a visual autobiography documenting herself and those closest to her, especially in the LGBTQ community and the heroin-addicted subculture. Her opus The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1980–1986) is a 40-minute slideshow of 700 photographs set to music that chronicled her life in New York during the 1980s. The Ballad was first exhibited at the 1985 Whitney Biennial, and was made into a photobook the following year. “For me it is not a detachment to take a picture. It's a way of touching somebody—it's a caress,” she said of the medium. “I think that you can actually give people access to their own soul.”

Born Nancy Goldin on September 12, 1953 in Washington, D.C., the artist began taking photographs as a teenager to cherish her relationships with those she photographed, as well as a political tool to inform the public of issues that were important to her. Influenced both by the fashion photography of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin she saw in magazines, as well as the revelatory portraits of Diane Arbus and August Sander, Goldin captured herself and her friends at their most vulnerable moments, as seen in her seminal photobook Nan Goldin: I’ll Be Your Mirror (1996). In 2018, she collaborated with the clothing brand Supreme by including three of her photographs, Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC (1991), Kim in Rhinestones, Paris (1991), and Nan as a dominatrix, Cambridge, MA (1978) on their spring/summer collection.

The artist currently lives and works between New York, NY, and Paris, France. Today, Goldin’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others.

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful photographs of friends, loves, memories, and a place in time.

[Blane · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Nan Goldin.

It prominently features her always transcendent photos, this time of the insanely photogenic Cookie Mueller.

No need to say anything more.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the stars for Cookie Mueller! I find this book incredibly intimate--like looking at a friend's photo album--but I suppose that intimacy is a hallmark of Nan Goldin's photos. Anyway I adore Cookie and I love seeing these beautiful and evocative pictures of her and her friends.

[Zara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I checked this out after seeing The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and thouroughly enjoyed it.