Jimmy-Paulette On David’s Bike

1991
cibachrome

Style/Movement: Contemporary, Photography

In this photo, Jimmy-Paulette rides on a bike with the well-known photographer David Armstrong.

Nan Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1953 and graduated from Tufts University in 1977. She has spent almost thirty years, first in Boston and then in New York, documenting her friends, lovers, acquaintances and their friends and lovers – an extended family and network – in various states of desire, depression, intoxication, violence, sickness, death… Her world is populated with all kinds of people, but most strikingly those at the peripheries – transgendered or transvestite, drug addicted, sexually adventurous, the sexually transgressive or violent. Her work has brought a world to the surface that many had never seen or realized existed. At times coolly detached and manually invested, the work is not voyeuristic; the artist even when not visually present, her hand is always visible. She is invested in every moment captured in the image, her intimateness belies the stylish cool detachment of the image. Her work captured the horror of the AIDS crisis as she documented friends progressing through the disease. Goldin has received a number of awards and honors including the National Endowment for the Arts. The Whitney Museum of American Art organized a major retrospective of her work in 1996, which traveled to five venues. She also participated in the Whitney Biennial of 1985, 1993, and 1995. Nan Goldin continues to live and work in New York.