This photographic album documents the past 20 years in the lives of the two artists and their "extended family." By way of introduction, Goldin writes about Armstrong and vice versa in two offhanded but meaningful tributes to their intertwined lives. The remainder of the book alternates Armstrong's black-and-white portraits and the mostly color snapshots and self-portraits by Goldin (e.g., The Other Side, LJ 5/ 15/93). High-quality reproductions and the lack of additional text reinforce the nonnarrative, slide-show quality of the work. The images are intimate, existential, and often disturbingly deadpan; yet they are pointedly unglamorous and anything but stagy. No one photo is more central than any other, whether it depicts the funeral of a friend who died of AIDS or a groggy woman reaching for a glass of orange juice on a night stand. Each moment in these scrutinized lives becomes important not only for its cruel ordinariness but because it is the moment that the picture was taken. A subjective diary has seldom been so universal. Recommended for all art and photography collections.

From Library Journal
These three inexpensive volumes present the work of some of today's most interesting and accessible art photographers. Emotions & Relations collects the work of five relatively established photographers who first came to know each other while in art school and the 1970s and have since sometimes been grouped as the "Boston School." While most members share similar content (their friends and acquaintances as subjects) and technique (lush, painterly uses of color), each demonstrates a clear individual style. This catalog to an exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle makes a fine case for both their grouping and their specific talents, offering two short essays on the show and the "school" and introductions to each artist preceding the separate portfolios. While all five?Nan Goldin, David Armstong, Mark Morrisroe, Jack Pierson, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia?have published monographs, this volume offers new insights for substantial art libraries and a concise and beautiful compendium for small and medium public libraries. The German Tillmans and Japanese Mori are younger but still have impressive museum credentials under their belts. Mori's book accompanies a show traveling from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh and Chicago. Her stylized photos, using herself as subject in a variety of over-the-top costumes, at first simply entertain and make the viewer happy. But her juxtapositions of contemporary urban life and surreal fantasy also impart more disturbing thoughts. Tillmans's book, his fourth, is the most comprehensive collection of his work and finally captures the full variety of styles?from diaristic snapshots to painterly still lifes to off-the-wall fashion spreads. What unifies all this is an ability to see the ordinary and be astonished. Emotions & Relations belongs in nearly all libraries; Tillmans is a fine choice for medium and large public institutions; Mori will be at home in larger public and academic art collections.?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Language Notes
Text: German, English

This is an expanded and updated version of Nan Goldin's seminal book The Other Side, originally published in 1993. There will be a revised introduction by Goldin, and for the first time the voices of those whose stories are represented.

Outre cette édition principale, trois éditions à tirage limité sont disponibles. Chaque édition spéciale présente une reliure de luxe et est limitée à 100 exemplaires; elle contient également un tirage original en cibachrome numéroté et signé par la photographe: Guido flottant, Levanzo, Sicile, 1999 (p. 26-27); Valérie dans le taxi, Paris, 2001 (p. 296-297) et La main de Jens sur le dos de Clemens, Paris, 2001 (p. 346-347). Pour de plus amples informations, merci de contacter Phaidon. Pour mieux connaître Phaidon, découvrir nos parutions et recevoir nos newsletters, consultez notre site: www.phaidon.com Le Terrain de jeu du diable présente une sélection exceptionnelle des photographies de Nan Goldin. Depuis les années 1970, Nan Goldin crée des images intimes et fascinantes, véritables récits à travers lesquels la photographe nous conte des histoires d'amour, d'amitié et d'identité qui, ensemble, constituent une chronique de notre temps. Cet ouvrage accorde une grande place aux oeuvres récentes de l'artiste, pour la plupart inédites, tirées de séries comme Toujours sur Terre (1997-2001), 57 jours (2000) et Éléments (1995-2003). Présenté en séquences et imaginé par Nan Goldin comme un journal intime, l'ensemble des photographies est à la fois d'une candeur et d'une audace étonnantes. Les clichés sont réunis par thèmes et les chapitres ponctués de poèmes, de chansons et de textes, souvent écrits spécialement pour cet ouvrage, d'auteurs tels que Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, E. E. Cummings, Cookie Mueller ou Richard Price. Le Terrain de jeu du diable est à ce jour l'ouvrage le plus complet consacré à Nan Goldin. Il met en lumière les sources d'inspiration et la vie personnelle de l'une des figures de la scène artistique contemporaine. Couverture: La main de Jens sur le dos de Clemens, Paris (2001)

This volume - investigating the work of a particular photographer, in this case, Nan Goldin - comprises a 4000-word essay by an expert in the field, 55 photographs presented chronologically, each with a commentary, and a biography of the featured photographer.

The Hasselblad Award is the most important international photography prize in the world today, and since 1980 award winners have included some of the greatest names the medium has known. The award is granted to "a photographer recognized for major achievement"; this may be an individual who has made a pioneering achievement in photography, who has had a decisive impact on one or more younger generations of photographers, or one who has implemented one or more internationally significant photographic projects.The 2007 Hasselblad Award winner is Nan Goldin, easily one of the most significant photographers of our time. Adopting the direct aesthetics of snapshot photography, she has documented her own life and that of her friends and others on the margins of society for more than 30 years, offering frank depictions of drug abuse, cross-dressing and alternative sexualities. Her intimate photographs depict urban lives in New York and Europe in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, a period massively determined by HIV and AIDS. Her practice of photography as a memoir and as a defense against loss, and her use of the slide show to present her work, resonate increasingly in the work of photographers of recent generations.

In her newest work, Nan Goldin merges her deep admiration for the artworks of the past with a lifelong dedication to her most immediate circle of friends. Invited by the Louvre, she photographed artworks of her choice at the museum and, guided by aesthetic and associative considerations, connected them to earlier photographs of her friends and lovers. In this way she not only draws inspiration from the rich sources of art history but revisits her own oeuvre of the last 40 years. The striking similarities between the two different pictorial worlds exert an intense dynamic on the viewer. The series, which yielded over 400 photographs, was shown for the first time in its full scope at the Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover, Germany. For this occasion, Diving for Pearls was conceived as an independent artist book which, alongside Goldin’s newest work 'Saints,' contains a selection of photographs that have never been published before.