Nan Goldin

Known for: intimate documentary photography of subcultural life

Nan Goldin began photographing her circle of friends in Boston and New York in the 1970s, documenting drag queens, lovers, and the everyday intimacy of subcultural life with a snapshot aesthetic deliberately opposed to the monumental. Her slideshow The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986) was shown in clubs and art spaces before being published as a book. In recent years she has become an outspoken activist against the Sackler family and their role in the opioid epidemic.