Nan Goldin, Best friends going out, Boston, 1973, All images are courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery — Nan Goldin, *Best friends going out, Boston*, 1973, All images are courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

The name Nan Goldin brings to mind hazy, intimate portraits of transgender individuals and drag queens, many of whom are (or were) the artist’s close friends. However, Goldin admits to not having photographed people in years until she met the writer Thora Siemsen. Over thirty years her junior, Thora is the subject of Goldin’s newest series on show at Marian Goodman Gallery. Opening on April 27, Memory Lost marks Goldin’s debut with the gallery’s New York location, and her first solo exhibition in the city in five years.

Goldin and Siemsen met through an interview on a show with Marian Goodman in London alongside the reissue of her book, The Other Side, at the end of 2019. After the lengthy conversation, they quickly formed a connection and decided to move in together when the pandemic hit. The pair kept each other company through lockdowns, sharing preferences on films and authors while playing games of backgammon in-between. It was also during this time that Goldin, finding inspiration in her friend, took up the camera again to document her own life.

Nan Goldin, Thora on my black bed, Brooklyn, NY, 2020, All images are courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery — Nan Goldin, *Thora on my black bed, Brooklyn, NY*, 2020, All images are courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

For Goldin, photographing someone is a particularly personal process that not only requires a feeling of deep connection, but also strengthens and enhances that bond. She had lost the drive for such an intense experience, occupying herself instead with capturing the sky or working through her archives prior to Siemsen. Goldin came to observe a beauty in her friend, of which she believed the latter was yet unaware. Feeling obliged to capture this charm, she created captivating and timeless portraits of Thora within the private spaces of her home, at a moment when the world outside increasingly succumbed to a new and uncertain reality. In one image, Thora looks straight at the camera, while her face is half eclipsed by shadows. Another slightly blurry photograph captures the writer in a reclining position against the bed, her nude upper body displaying an almost startlingly shade of white. Though reminiscent of the raw and sensual aesthetics of Goldin’s earlier works, they appear to portray a brighter and more sober mood.

Nan Goldin, Blue Hills, Italy, n.d. All images are courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery — Nan Goldin, *Blue Hills, Italy*, n.d. All images are courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

Bearing the same title as the exhibition, Memory Lost is a new digital slideshow that uses an assemblage of snapshots, discovered and edited from archival images, to portray Goldin’s personal memories and lived experiences of drug addiction. Adding to the immersive journey is an emotionally charged score from composer Mica Levi, along with music by CJ Calderwood and Soundwalk Collective. For the first time in Goldin’s career, a group of stills from the slideshow are displayed as dye sublimation prints on aluminium, recalling a time when the outcomes of photographs were less predictable and subject to serendipitous technical glitches — believed by some to be a reflection of the subconscious.

Another new video work in the show is Sirens, Goldin’s first to be created completely using found footage. The fourteen minute video draws from thirty of her favourite films and features scenes from a version of Salome starring Donyale Luna, an American actress and supermodel who passed away in her thirties from an overdose. Likewise accompanied by an original score from Mica Levi, the work itself generates a hypnotic effect that lures the audience into the ecstasy of being high – befitting the allusion to Greek mythology in its title.

Nan Goldin, Sirens, 2019 – 2020 (Video still), All images are courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery — Nan Goldin, *Sirens*, 2019 – 2020 (Video still), All images are courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

The Third Floor Gallery, on the other hand, provides a flashback to an earlier stage in Goldin’s career. The Other Side, a newly edited slideshow, presents photographs taken during the artist’s life with her transgender friends, spanning from 1972 to 2010. First published as a book in 1992 and updated in 2019, the series celebrates gender non-conformity and transcendence embodied by its subjects.

Memory Lost is partly a continuation of Goldin’s recent efforts in addressing the drug crisis. Since 2017, the artist has led her activist group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) to raise public awareness on Oxycontin overdose and bring to light the role of the Sackler family in popularizing prescriptions of the controversial painkiller. Several of her recent pieces, presented here, offer a haunting picture of living under the influence of addiction.

Memory Lost runs through June 12, and is viewable by appointment only.