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An Immersive Retrospective of Fifty Years of Creation

An Exploration of Nan Goldin’s Work

Hosted at the Grand Palais in Paris, the exhibition This Will Not End Well offers a sensory journey through the work of the American photographer Nan Goldin. Renowned for her documentation of LGBTQ+ communities in Boston and New York since the 1970s, the 72-year-old artist presents a structured journey composed of slideshows and videos. Divided into six chapters, this retrospective revisits five decades of artistic creation.

Nan Goldin’s fame is largely rooted in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a project emerging from late 1970s New York. This body of work transforms her everyday snapshots into a visual narrative driven by music. Goldin casts a spotlight on her close friends, lovers, and figures from the drag scene, capturing their essence through her lens.

Through this approach, her work fits into a broader reflection on the representation of LGBTQ+ people in media and cinema, where images evolve into powerful tools for storytelling, memory, and visibility.

Embracing a Cinematic Style

According to Fredrik Liew, the exhibition’s curator and director of collections at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, where the exhibition debuted in 2022, Nan Goldin never truly aimed to be a photographer. “She wanted to be a filmmaker,” he explains. This ambition is apparent in her work, which emphasizes editing, rhythm, and storytelling over merely juxtaposing images.

Goldin had long awaited an exhibition that could reveal the cinematic dimension of her oeuvre.

An Experience-Driven Exhibition Design

Designed by Lebanese architect Hala Wardé, the exhibition’s layout heightens the audience’s engagement. Following a prior collaboration at the Château de Versailles in 2019, the two creators continue their artistic dialogue here. The exhibition unfolds as immersive pavilions, forming a fragmented village. Each structure boasts its own visual identity, with unique shapes and colors.

Barbara Kroher, associate curator at the Grand Palais, explains that each work “inhabits a pavilion.” The journey invites visitors to traverse from one world to another—from the club to the beach, from the chapel to the cinema—without resorting to scripted or folkloric representations of queer scenes.

Explore more art and cultural initiatives by visiting the dedicated section for LGBTQ+ events and cultural news, showcasing exhibitions, festivals, and engaged projects.

Transforming the Personal into Collective Memory

The exhibition remains true to Nan Goldin’s deeply autobiographical approach, merging personal diary with critical observation of American society. Barbara Kroher emphasizes that Goldin’s work is devoid of voyeurism, as the artist is always a participant in what she portrays.

Fredrik Liew highlights this immersive aspect: for Goldin, photography resembles a form of closeness, or even “caress.” Her work envelops the viewer in assumed intimacy, without distance or judgment.

Her images, both raw and sincere, document LGBTQI+ communities without exoticism or caricature. The series The Other Side, featured in the exhibition, pays tribute to her trans friends with profound sensitivity. Despite differing life paths, the emotions explored—love, pain, joy—resonate universally.

Narratives Marked by Memory and Struggles

The exhibited series testify to lives often threatened with erasure. The AIDS crisis weaves through The Ballad of Sexual Dependency like a persistent wound. Memory Lost addresses the opioid addiction experienced by Goldin herself, while Sirens delves into the ambiguous allure of drugs without moral judgment. Finally, Sisters, Saints, Sibyls draws from the loss of her sister Barbara to probe traumas, psychiatric confinement, and violence against women.

Despite the gravity of these themes, Goldin’s perspective is imbued with vitality and irony. This tension between harshness and energy imparts a sense of hope to the entire exhibition, leaving visitors with a lasting, poignant, yet reassuring impression.

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