These 500 pages of beautifully reproduced colour pictures constitute a moving soulful and surprisingly optimistic record of the work of a genius.

Laid out in diary-like sequences by Goldin herself, the material is both courageously candid and affirmative. This chapter was hard for me to go through in the library, having people around me, watching me watch other people being naked in a personal and intimate moment. While looking at the pictures, I wanted to almost identify myself with the voyuer, wanting to see what I see in private.Instead she is a modern photographer, someone who still believes in the capacity of the photographic image to represent the truth, to indicate and make a memorial from authentic experiences. Jens' Hand on Clemen's Back,Paris2001" by Nan Goldin is a large format silkscreen limited print edition of 100. The storm comes with personal family pictures, which at first looked like a usual family album pictures… but that was exactly the problem (? Without reading about the book beforehand and finding information about what the series of photographs included in this book are, I jumped right into viewing. Photography also became a mechanism for working through loss, and for preserving this loss ad infinitum.

Valerie in the taxi, Paris, 2001 by Nan Goldin is a large format silkscreen limited print edition of 100. Looking through a camera placed in people’s houses and rooms to observe the usual moments of their life. The mysteryof loss, the depth of feelings it arouses, as well as the spiritual longing it triggers, are also expressed through powerful images of relics, ex-voto and religious images ( Skulls and Tears, Chapel of Salpétrière, Paris, 1999; Masectomy ex-voto, Madonna dell’Arco, Somma Vesuviana, 1996). We see them sleeping, dancing, showering, making love, together at parties, waiting, crying, nursing, on the beach, in the pool, in bars, in hotel rooms. She became immersed in the intense climate of the East Village in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with its parties, music, film scene, drugs, and both heterosexual and homosexual sexual experiences.People are portrayed always with empathy both indoors and outdoors as they blend into and lose themselves in their surrounding landscape, while at the same time the landscape becomes personal and intimate, almost portraiture. Encountering the installation is a continuous emotion: the musical background is a collage of the eclectic music the artist loves; the projected images run along the wall in incessant fashion, from the photo of a birthday party in 1981, with Goldin seated in ‘her’ boyfriend’s arms, to other embracing couples, to friends who cry while they confide in Nan, to women in bathtubs, to people drinking: “It’s ultimately about how difficult it is to couple, says the artist, and how intense the need is.

The Devil's Playground is the first major book to be published on Goldin's work since 1996 and it is by far her most important to date. The same people are photographed at different moments in their lives, marking relationships that continue in time and that constitute that very close ‘family’ of friends by whom Goldin loves to be surrounded.This book features a significant body of latest work by Goldin, including photographs from new series such as Still on Earth (1997-2001), 57 Days (2000) and Elements (1995-2003), many of which are previously unpublished. Goldin's life and friends became the focus of her work - a diary of friends and lovers in Europe and America, in the underground and gay scene. This book features a significant body of latest work by Goldin, including photographs from new series such as Still on Earth (1997-2001), 57 Days (2000) and Elements (1995-2003), many of which are previously unpublished. The Devil's Playground is the first major book to be published on Goldin's work since 1996 and it is by far her most important to date. This monograph brings to light both the sources of Goldin’s inspiration and her life as a prominent contemporary artist: she is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading photographers.

while “Mon am'” portrays another more mature couple of friends, with occasional apparitions of the woman’s child ( Valerie and Bruno Sex, Hand on Wall, Paris, 2001; Valerie, Bruno and Mel Laughing in Bed, Paris, 2001; etc. Each is signed and numbered by Nan Goldin and comes with a special edition of The Devil's Playground that is beautifully bound, also individually signed and numbered. Goldin wants to remember her personal life in every detail; people encountered, experiences shared, emotions felt, relationships that endure over time. It also presents over three hundred prints of photographs taken since the 1970s, with a particular attention towards her recent works. Nan Goldin’s art evokes what personal memory fails to preserve – a person’s glance, the texture of skin, or the feel of flesh.The Devil’s Playground was the first major book to be published on Goldin’s work since 1996 and it is by far her most important to date. This new traveling exhibition, “Devil’s Playground”, began its tour at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2001 with subsequent venues at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Museu Serralves, Porto. This book is a special edition of The Devil's Playground that is beautifully bound, signed and numbered. At first, the book introduces itself with pictures of ocean and nature in general, which are like the calm before the storm.