Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong

Over the past five decades, Nan Goldin has photographed personal relationships, addiction and queer subcultures, forming an episodic autobiography she calls ‘a record of my life that no one can revise.’ These unflinching images transformed photography by closing the distance between the observer and the observed – snapshots capturing the intimacies of her own life and the lives of her community. This exhibition highlights four of Goldin’s recent films: Memory Lost (2019–2021), Stendhal Syndrome (2024), You Never Did Anything Wrong, Part I (2024), and the public debut of You Never Did Anything Wrong, Part II (2026). Memory Lost chronicles Goldin’s personal history with drugs and the darkness of addiction. Stendhal Syndrome contrasts intimate portraits of Goldin’s friends and lovers with classical art from museums, revealing uncanny resemblances. While the latter two works mark a striking new direction as Goldin shifts her focus from humans towards animal consciousness and the land. Accompanying these films is a series of photographic stills and images from Goldin’s archive. Goldin’s extraordinary perspective, seen through the lens of her camera, invites you to understand how personal experience and political action are interconnected, capturing the shared joy and sorrow of human, animal and environmental existence. Marking Goldin’s first institutional exhibition in the UK since 2002, this long-overdue exhibition rounds off the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary year.