The Devil's Playground: 0000

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The Devil's Playground presents a major collection of photographs by Nan Goldin (b.1953). Since the 1980s, Goldin has consistently created photographs that are intimate and compelling: they tell personal stories of relationships, friendships and identity, while chronicling different eras and exposing the passage of time.

Goldin is one of the founding members of the activist group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now). She continues to live and produce work in New York City, Berlin, and Paris. Of her most photographed subjects at this time were Greer Lankton and Cookie Mueller. Nan Goldin’s photos featured Mueller so many times that a separate publication was dedicated to them. The book Cookie Mueller was published in 1991. Mueller starred in various John Water films, and Goldin described her as “a cross between Tobacco Road and a Hollywood B-Girl”. Many of Nan Goldin’s photographs feature Mueller’s wedding to Vittorio Scarpati, her relationship with her son, and her battle with HIV/AIDS. In 2000, Goldin injured her hand badly, which greatly impacted her work. She was prescribed to use OxyContin by her doctor to treat the pain in her wrist. This drug, however, led to serious addiction, and in 2017, during a speech in Brazil, Goldin announced that she was suffering from opioid addiction. Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (2012) by Nan Goldin, edited by Mark Holborn, Marvin Heiferman, and Suzanne FletcherAfter her sister’s suicide, Goldin began relying on marijuana to help her cope. She also started dating older men and left home when she was only 13 or 14 years old.

The lighting of the image is sensual and soft with an intimate yellow hue suggesting that the sun might be setting. This could be symbolic of the waning of their relationship, which would end in the following year. This monograph brings to light both the sources of Goldin's inspiration and her life as a prominent contemporary artist: she is internationally recognized as one of today's leading photographers. Born in Washington DC, Goldin grew up in Boston where she began taking photographs at the age of 15. She has since lived in New York, Bangkok, Berlin, Tokyo and Paris, amassing an extensive body of work that represents an often disconcertingly seductive photographic portrait of our time. Mueller eventually passed away in 1989 from AIDS-related pneumonia. One of Goldin’s most famous photographs of Mueller is simply titled Cookie (1983).Chrisél Attewell (b. 1994) is a multidisciplinary artist from South Africa. Her work is research-driven and experimental. Inspired by current socio-ecological concerns, Attewell’s work explores the nuances in people’s connection to the Earth, to other species, and to each other. She works with various mediums, including installation, sculpture, photography, and painting, and prefers natural materials, such as hemp canvas, oil paint, glass, clay, and stone.

Goldin’s work from 1995 onwards broadened to include multiple book collaborations, urban landscapes of the New York City Skyline, and intriguing images of people in the water. Goldin never married or had children of her own, but she started increasingly documenting domestic life, with multiple images of children, babies, and family life. The suicide of Goldin’s sister and her tumultuous and traumatic childhood continued to plague Goldin. This can most notably be seen in her 2006 exhibition, Chasing a Ghost. The exhibition was an installation that included moving images and sound, marking a turn in Goldin’s work to the more cinematic. The Devil’s Playground presents a major collection of photographs by Nan Goldin (b.1953). Since the 1980s, Goldin has consistently created photographs that are intimate and compelling: they tell personal stories of relationships, friendships and identity, while chronicling different eras and exposing the passage of time. The documentary and confessional style of this self-portrait are like the images she took of other people in her life, which are almost always raw, honest, and emotional, but glamorous. The photograph, Goldin claims, marks the end of a long-term abusive relationship with a man whom she loved deeply. This famous photograph features two of Goldin’s friends, drag queens Misty and Jimmy Paulette, on their way to the New York City Pride March. The image is a close-up shot of the two sitting in a taxi, on their way to join their float at the march. The drag queens are sitting closely next to each other, their gaze directly into the camera. Few photographers can boast a body of work as deep and uncompromisingly honest as that of Nan Goldin. Internationally renowned for her documentation of love, fluid sexuality, glamour, beauty, death, intoxication and pain, Goldin’s photographs feature her life and those in it. Her visual language and “social portraiture” approach not only rejects the conventional limits of the medium of photography, it creates something unique: a mirror of herself, as well as the world.

Dependency and Abuse

Around this time, Goldin attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts from which she graduated in 1978. After her graduation, she moved to New York City, where she continued to photograph the subcultures of the city, along with the post-punk new-wave music scene. Her work was showcased at the 2019 and 2022 Contemporary Istanbul with Berman Contemporary and her latest solo exhibition, titled Sociogenesis: Resilience under Fire, curated by Els van Mourik, was exhibited in 2020 at Berman Contemporary in Johannesburg. Attewell also exhibited at the main section of the 2022 Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Through her images, Goldin sought to remove the taboo linked to discussing important issues in our societies that are often ignored and overlooked.