Nan Goldin’s (Born 1953 in Washington, DC) oeuvre is a rich trove of documentary-style photographs capturing intimate moments and reflecting contemporary life. Her photographs from the late 1970s and 80s record a particularly lively moment in Boston’s past, as artists such as Jack Pierson, Mark Morrisroe, David Armstrong and others lived and worked in the city, forming what is known as the “Boston School.”
Included in Goldin’s series From Here to Maternity, 1986-2000, a montaged work featuring twenty-four images, Ulrike, Stockholm contends with the archetypal mother-child relationship. The portrait is reminiscent of historical depictions of Jesus as a child, drawing on a ripe history of the iconographic mother and child. Appearing alongside images of parenthood, which document recognizable activities of child rearing from breastfeeding to diaper changing, Ulrike, Stockholm becomes enmeshed in the simultaneous banality and monumentality of the archetype. In the essay “Deep Pictures of Us All” from the exhibition catalogue, I’ll Be Your Mirror, Joachim Sartorius aptly notes that “the focus of Nan Goldin’s work is the human body, fragile yet strong, tiny yet full of presence, surrounded by affection, love, and destructive tendencies.”
