Author Description

Based on an exhibition of the same title at the Whitney Museum of American Art this collection of more than 300 pictures documents the alternative culture of Nan Goldin's friends and acquaintances in the arty bohemian substrata of Manhattan. Goldin turns her camera outward to record transvestites carousing in downtown clubs and the social impact of AIDS and drugs; and inward to look with unblinking intimacy at her friends, her lovers of both sexes, and herself. She records her boyfriend masturbating. She shows him on the toilet. She shows her own battered face in a mirror after he beats her up. She traces the decline and death of her friend Cookie Mueller. Goldin has created a stark record of her urban demi-monde.