Nan Goldin is not an unknown name in the world of photography. Her works are frequently exhibited in renowned galleries all over the world. Over the last four decades, she has been a very significant photographer and artist. However, her life has never been smooth. She sailed through multiple rough tides and numerous tumultuous time periods throughout her life. She had to take up multiple odd jobs to survive. She even worked as a sex worker and go-go dancer to buy her photography films. But, she does not know how to stop. Her indomitable spirit has triumphed over all the odds. Despite innumerable obstacles, she did not get crushed. Her saga still goes on. She had the courage and guts to take on the powerful billionaire Sackler family for the Opioid Crisis. Her organisation P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) strongly protested against the Sacklers on behalf of more than half a million unfortunate Americans who lost their lives due to the Opioid Crisis. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is based on her life. Filmmaker Laura Poitras shows her life struggle, photography works, and protests against the Opioid Crisis in the film.
Famous photographer Nan Goldin’s life has never been easy. She has gone through multiple tumultuous phases in life. She says that it’s easy to make one’s life into stories, but it’s harder to sustain real memories. When she was merely eleven years old, her elder sister Barbara committed suicide lying down on the railway tracks. After her sister’s suicide, Nan was sent to a foster home named Jewish Adoption Agency in Beacon Hill. However, she was ousted from all the foster homes and schools. Then, Satya Community School in Lincoln saved her life.
In Satya Community School, Nan met another would-be famous photographer David Armstrong who became her inspiration and vision to live. She was 15 and he was 14. Nan was so silent at that point of time in her life that David felt as if Nan was speaking in whispers. They both were shoplifters. He was openly gay and named her “Nan”. They liberated each other. Nan got a Polaroid camera and she was so attached to it as if it was the only language she spoke at that time. The camera gave her a personality and voice. She used to visit “The Other Side” bar and felt at home for the 1st time, and started taking pictures. David and Nan started going to Provincetown, which has been referred to as the gay paradise for decades, in 1975. She worked at a Portuguese hot dog stand and then got a job as a bartender at the Pied Piper, the lesbian bar. She lived in the separatist lesbian community and fell in love with a beautiful girl. Nan always used photography as a sublimation for sex. She even thought it was better than sex. Nan mingled with Cookie Mueller, Sharon Niesp, John Waters, and Divine. Cookie Mueller and actress and singer Sharon Niesp were together for many years. Nan feels that it was a time of freedom and possibilities, and that’s when she did her 1st slideshow.
Nan moved to Bowery, Lower Manhattan in 1978. She met curator and writer Marvin Heiferman in 1979 with a box of pictures and that’s how she entered the art world. Nan lived with artists Suzanne Fletcher and Greer Lankton. At that point in time, Cookie Mueller was the center of activities in New York downtown. Both Nan and Cookie worked as go-go dancers. New York was topless but New Jersey was not, so, Nan danced in New Jersey. She even worked as a sex worker. Liberty’s Booty (1980) directed by Vivienne Dick was based on her life and experiences in the whorehouse. In the film, Nan played the madam of the house where she worked as a sex worker. She worked as a go-go dancer and sex worker to buy her photography films. Those were the level of her struggle during her youth.
After a very tough phase in her life, Nan joined Tin Pan Alley in Times Square. The owner of Tin Pan Alley Maggie Smith employed ex-sex workers and showed them a ray of hope. The bar would be run by all-female staff without any bouncers. A customer would be allowed there until a staff like Nan wanted him to go. Nan got a lot of resistance from the male artists and gallerists who thought that nobody should photograph one’s own life. But, she thought that the art world was bullshit and real life was Times Square.
Brian was Nan’s partner from 1981 to 1984. He went to Berlin where Nan had been for a slideshow. Brian became jealous and punched on her face repeatedly when he came to know that Nan had been with a girl Sylvie from Paris. He targeted her left eye and wanted to make her blind. Blood came out of her left eye and all the bones in the orbital floor of the eye were broken. Sylvie saved her life. Brian burned her diaries, however, her slideshow was saved as she kept that in the loft where she had shown it. Otherwise, he would have destroyed that. The struggle between autonomy and dependency is the core of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Nan’s father and Brian tried to stop the publication of her book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Her father thought she was accusing him of her sister Barbara’s suicide. Brian’s attack created such an intense panic in her mind that she was terrified of all those men when she got back to Tin Pan.
Nan felt that her parents were not equipped to be parents. They had children as they were expected, more than it was about nurturing other human beings. Barbara’s rebellion was the starting point for Nan’s own. She showed her the way. Barbara was sent to an orphanage and then she burned down the curtain and escaped from there. However, the psychiatrist at the hospital felt that Mrs. Goldin was sick and not Miss Goldin. She badly needed a home, love, and care. Then, she would have survived. Mrs. Goldin was sexually abused by one of her family members and she could not cope when Barbara hit puberty.
Filmmaker Laura Poitras has brilliantly woven Nan’s life and her protests against the Sacklers on two parallel tracks. Nan’s photographic slideshows like The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, The Other Side, Memory Lost, and Sisters, Saints, and Sybils and archival footage from her life are infused in between. She had undergone wrist surgery in Berlin in 2014. Initially, she was prescribed to consume 3 OxyContin pills or 40 mg per day. However, she gradually got addicted to OxyContin and swallowed 18 pills per day. She learned about the Sacklers family in 2017 and that’s when she established P.A.I.N.
The members of P.A.I.N. including Nan went to the Temple of Dendur in the Sacklers’ Wing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) at 4 pm on 10th March 2018 to stage a protest against the Sacklers. They threw away the bottles of OxyContin in the water tank beside the Temple of Dendur. Their slogans were – “Temple of Death”, “Temple of Money”, “Temple of Greed”, “Sacklers lie thousands die”, “Sacklers lie people die”, and “Sacklers knew their pills wound kill”. In 1996, Richard Sackler sent a jubilant email to his assistant confirming that there would be a blizzard of OxyContin prescriptions across the United States of America.
The members of P.A.I.N. took worthwhile revenge when they went to Guggenheim, threw away the prescriptions from above, and then walked down to Met. It was indeed a blizzard of OxyContin prescription rejections. Nan threatened to withdraw her retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery of London which was in the middle of accepting a $1.3 mn grant from the Sacklers. However, the Gallery ultimately dropped the grant. Ultimately, all the major museums Tate, Met, and Guggenheim dropped the Sacklers’ grant. A hedge fund too dropped the Sackler’s grant, which was unprecedented.
Louvre was the 1st museum to remove the Sackler name and many major galleries, museums, and educational institutions followed them. Amid more than 3000 lawsuits, Purdue Pharma ultimately filed for bankruptcy. The members of P.A.I.N. alleged that the Sacklers had siphoned more than $10 bn from Purdue Pharma before declaring bankruptcy. The Sacklers agreed to pay $6 bn to settle all the lawsuits against them and Purdue Pharma. Anybody can pursue business unless it affects others. Medicines should be made only if they are beneficial to humans. If medicines are made only for the objective of profit, those will surely be a curse to mankind.
Despite knowing fully about the drug addiction of OxyContin and Valium, the Sacklers kept manufacturing those drugs. Richard Sackler even confirmed that there would be a blizzard of OxyContin prescriptions across the United States. More than half a million Americans lost their lives due to the Opioid Epidemic. The humongous greed of the Sacklers is responsible for that. Even though Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy, the family members of the victims will never be able to forgive the Sacklers for their tremendous loss and suffering. The Sacklers created indelible scars in their lives. Only a bit of their suffering came out during the virtual bankruptcy hearing of Purdue Pharma in the presence of David, Richard, and Theresa Sackler. However, the enormous suffering will always remain deep down in their hearts.