Tracker Pixel for Entry

​A Portrait of the Portrait Artist: ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’

Cinema | November 27th, 2022

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

“Citizenfour” Oscar-winner Laura Poitras profiles photographer and activist Nan Goldin in “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”

Like its talented subject, the movie cannot be confined to a single category or story arc. Along with a penetrating, candid examination of Goldin’s career trajectory, the film spends considerable time on the artist’s efforts to hold Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family accountable for the overprescribing of opioids including OxyContin. Poitras artfully covers lots of territory in the documentary, which received the Golden Lion, the Venice International Film Festival’s highest honor, in September of 2022.

Goldin may not be a household name outside the art world, but her searing and confessional pictures are among the most influential to emerge from New York City’s post-Stonewall cultural explosion. Documenting friends, acquaintances, and her own intimate relationships, Goldin profiled members of the gay and transgender community with the eye of an insider. Her interests also led to photos of the Bowery-based drug scene and images of the vibrant post-punk and new and no wave music worlds. The film’s center section examines in detail “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” Goldin’s protean slideshow.

Goldin crosses paths with many other aspiring creative artists during her most fecund years, and Poitras carefully organizes the guest book by allowing some notable faces to flutter and flicker by and others to take up more space and greater prominence.

The deeper Poitras dives, the greater the realization that so many of Goldin’s peers lost their lives to AIDS or drug overdoses. Goldin once wrote of her late friend and collaborator Cookie Mueller: “She was the starlet of the Lower East Side: a poetess, a short-story writer, she starred in John Waters’s early movies. She was sort of the queen of the whole downtown social scene.”

Mueller may personify and characterize the moment in time that Goldin so memorably captured, but Poitras devotes just as much or more attention to David Wojnarowicz, who was recently memorialized in Chris McKim’s vital, feature-length portrait.

Goldin’s curatorial role in the “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing” exhibition in 1989 is highlighted by the director for more than one thematically resonant meaning – you marvel at the way Poitras connects the dots between ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) to illuminate the intersection of politics and art that will factor in different stages of Goldin’s life.

Seen planning and carrying out the civil disobedience designed to force prominent museums to remove the Sackler name from buildings, wings, galleries, and collections, Goldin leverages her own prominence to bring about change. Like many autobiographically-inclined artists, Goldin preserved and archived her own family history.

The tragedy of older sister Barbara, who took her own life in 1965 when Nan was eleven, haunts “All the Beauty and Bloodshed” as profoundly and poignantly as any of the photographs Nan would go on to make. Goldin’s openness and forthrightness extends to her advocacy on behalf of so many others who, like herself, struggled or continue to struggle with opioid addiction.

Recently in:

Proposed Bills Could Take Books off Library ShelvesBy Laura Simmonslaurasimmons2025@u.northwestern.edu The passing of ND House Bill 1205 and ND Senate Bill 2360, which would prevent sexually explicit books from being in public…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comHPR chats with a local legendThe following interview was done in February of 2016, just a few months after Mr. Josef Olivieri's 90th birthday. We're sorry to hear of his passing at the age of 97 on…

Tuesday, March 21, 6:30pmZandbroz Variety, FargoAuthor of “Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land” Taylor Broby will discuss the important role libraries play in their communities as sanctuaries of acceptance. He will…

By John Strandjas@hpr1.comOur Opinion: Who on Earth would ever want to move to North Dakota?Let’s talk about the left hand and the right hand. Or, more correctly, let’s focus on the right hand, being as there is no left in ND…

By Ed Raymond  fargogadfly@gmail.comHas Christianity Gone Bankrupt Because of Evangelicals, Stupidity, and the Vatican?The word “bankruptcy” refers to money because…

Well shiver me timbers. After weeks of sampling some of the finest drinks in F-M from more bars than we could shake a belaying pin at, the results of High Plains Reader’s 6th Annual Cocktail Showdown are in! For nine weeks,…

By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.comWhen thinking of popular sandwiches associated with the Upper Midwest, the sloppy joe immediately comes to mind. But let’s not forget the sandwich with a spicy side – the taco grinder. It’s a…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com Upon discovering the music of Arkansas-based musician Nick Shoulders, there are a couple of things that come to mind. At first listen it’s no secret that his sound is a celebration of past music…

By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.comOn Saturday, March 25, filmmaker Mike Flanagan returns to the Fargo Film Festival, where “Absentia,” his debut feature, made its world premiere in 2011. This time, he will be joined by his…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comIf you’ve ever driven down the Enchanted Highway, the 32-mile ribbon of road connecting Regent to Gladstone in western North Dakota, home to the world’s largest salvaged metal sculptures,…

By Jessica M. Hawkesjmhawkes84@gmail.comIt wasn’t long after the founding of the railroad and river town of New Rockford that entertainment venues started to put down their own roots. Its population bolstered by booms of nearby…

By Jan Syverson  Jan.r.Syverson@gmail.comFor the past 30 years live, stand-up comedy has had a place in the Fargo Moorhead area, Starting with…

By Kris Gruberperriex1@gmail.comSpring is here (mostly), and our area is buzzing with people eager to get back out and about -- many newly vaccinated and feeling a bit safer. Partnering with Jade Events, Fargo Brewing is just…

By John Showalter  john.d.showalter@gmail.comThey sell fentanyl test strips and kits to harm-reduction organizations and…

JANUARY 19, 1967– MARCH 8, 2023 Brittney Leigh Goodman, 56, of Fargo, N.D., passed away unexpectedly at her home on March 8, 2023. Brittney was born January 19, 1967, to Ruth Wilson Pollock and Donald Ray Goodman, in Hardinsburg,…

By Ken and Alice Christiansonsubmit@hpr1.com HB 1332 is currently before the North Dakota legislature. The bill proposes to permit social workers to use a discredited treatment method to convert the sexual orientation of gay and…