#nan-goldin

#nan-goldin

Although the AGO had planned to jointly purchase Goldin's moving-image work Stendhal Syndrome (2024) with the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) and Minneapolis's Walker Art Center, it pulled out in mid 2025 after its modern and contemporary curatorial working committee voted 11-to-9 against it. The move was unexpected, especially as the AGO already had three Goldin works in its collection. (The VAG and Walker Art Center proceeded with the joint acquisition.)

For her formative 1985 work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Nan Goldin eschewed the traditions of exhibiting photography by compiling her images the number of which ran close to 700 into a slideshow, and screening it alongside a soundtrack featuring, among others, Yoko Ono, Maria Callas and Dionne Warwick. The 45-minute long show has since been screened in galleries and museums all over the world, and is lauded for its searing candour and highly personal subject matter the series comprises photographs taken by Goldin of her friends, family and burgeoning subcultures in cities like Boston, New York and Berlin.

To enter Nan Goldin's new exhibition is to delve deep into the photographer's subconscious mind and potent emotional world. Titled This Will Not End Well - a foreboding warning of the intensity in store - the show takes Goldin, one of the most famous living photographers, and repositions her as a full-blown filmmaker. "I never cared about photography too much ... whereas film has been my number one medium all my life,"