Head to the Grand Palais to dive into the raw and magnificent universe of This Will Not End Well, the first French retrospective of Nan Goldin, the absolute icon of contemporary photography. Considered one of the most influential artists of our time, the American photographer reveals herself here as a filmmaker. Through six installations that trace more than fifty years of her life, the spectator is invited to experience the journey through an exhibition that highlights the unfiltered intimacy of her life and that of her entourage.
The story of a life through the 7th art
The visitor is invited to move through a dark atmosphere, almost groping, in which 6 pavilions emerge to host the projections. The exhibition is solely composed of slide shows alternating photographs, archival images, and an eclectic soundtrack with a single common thread linking them: revealing the fleeting moments of daily life for an overwhelming result.
At the heart of this retrospective sits The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1981-2022), the artist's masterpiece and the reflection of her entire body of work. We settle in front of more than 700 images—raw, frontal, sometimes difficult—where the artist lays bare her inner circle. Faces, bodies, unfiltered stories. Goldin states: “It is the diary I let others read. [...] It is therefore my personal relationships and not my sense of observation that inspired these photographs.” And behind this work, a reality that shatters: that of a generation mowed down by AIDS. The slide show then becomes a space of memory, a tribute to all her friends, her community decimated by the disease.
The choice of the slide show as a medium is not accidental. Always in motion, never frozen, it makes these projections works in constant evolution. She has never projected the same version twice, much like a metaphor for her changing vision of the world.
Documenting the life of a community
Drugs, sex, and addiction: Nan Goldin lifts the veil on these subjects often considered taboo. She grew up at the heart of a queer community, still considered marginal during the 80s, which became a raw terrain that feeds her entire work. The slide shows she imagines are divided into chapters ranging from gender identity to violence against women, including parties, sexual relations, and drug use. With the projection The Other Side (1992-2021), she pays tribute to her transgender friends with whom she lived and grew up, and for whom she felt a deep fascination.
You need a strong stomach to face Memory Lost. This slide show takes us straight into the hell of opioid addiction—a dependency that Goldin herself went through. Her ambition is clear: to shake consciences and reveal, without a filter, the brutal daily life of these marginal communities. Finally, it is impossible not to highlight Stendhal’s Syndrome. This dizzying projection plays with mise en abîme and explores scopophilia, that troubling fascination with art. Through a succession of personal photographs and paintings of ancient myths, doubt sets in and one can no longer distinguish the photos from the canvases. Goldin manages with absolute finesse to blend six of Ovide's metamorphoses with her own life and those of her loved ones. Embraces, romantic poses, and fragments of daily life mingle with mythology to offer a timeless work that leaves us facing our personal fascination. With This Will Not End Well, Nan Goldin does not settle for just exhibiting her work: she takes us on a sensory, intimate, and deeply committed journey. Between pain, love, despair, and resilience, each projection acts as a fragment of life snatched from reality. We emerge from this immersion shaken, sometimes uncomfortable, but above all transformed, with the feeling of having shared, for a suspended moment, the gaze of an artist who never stopped documenting the truth, however raw it may be.
Nan Goldin - This Will Not End Well. From March 18 to June 21 at the Grand Palais. From Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 am to 7:30 pm. Late night on Friday until 10 pm. © Nan Goldin
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