GLR July-August 2023

Nan Goldin’s Song of Herself

O N MARCH 10, 2018, a cadre of activists from the organiza tion Prescription Addiction In tervention Now (PAIN), which was founded by photographer Nan Goldin, entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and proceeded to the gallery that houses the Temple of Dendur. The ancient Egyptians used the Temple

snorted, stolen from pharmacies, and pre scribed by doctors who were selling pre scriptions. In a 2018 The New York Times article, “Origins of an Epidemic,” Barry Meier reported that the George W. Bush ad ministration had blocked felony charges against Purdue Pharma despite a four-year investigation by the Department of Justice that concluded that Purdue had made bil

S TEVEN F. D ANSKY

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED Directed by Laura Poitras HBO Documentary Films

lions while creating a national epidemic. According to the Cen ters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): “In 2020, an average of 44 people died each day from overdoses involving prescription opioids, totaling more than 16,000 deaths. Pre scription opioids were involved in nearly 24% of all opioid overdose deaths in 2020, a 16% increase in prescription opioid involved deaths from 2019 to 2020.” Goldin is one of the documentary’s producers and its prin cipal protagonist. The film thematically weaves together two complex narrative strands: her personal story and the protest against the Sacklers. The latter takes place against the backdrop

for rituals in which the community could offer food, drink, and clothing to a resident deity. The activists likewise brought an offering as they formed a chorus line at the edge of the re flecting pool in front of the Temple and, in choreographed synchronization, opened their backpacks, which contained a thousand empty orange prescription bottles labeled “Oxy Contin prescribed to you by the Sacklers.” They tossed the bottles into the water and unfurled several black banners with the slogan “Shame on Sackler” while chanting “Shame.” This scene in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is about protesting the Sackler family, whose pharmaceutical company Purdue

of images from The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1985), her autobiographical slide show set to music that became a cultural touchstone of the 1980s and ele vated Goldin to prominence as a photographer. Her work is de scribed as “felt photography,” which Roland Barthes defined as “affective intentionality” linking personal feelings and photogra phy’s capacity to arouse emo tions. She said the slide show was how she retained deep visceral contact with loss, asserting that images function as memory and are talismanic: “The slide show’s very much about loss.” It serves as a balladic memorial to the lost generation of her tribe from New York’s downtown subculture dec imated by the AIDS pandemic.

Nan Goldin leading the demonstration at the Met on Marth 10, 2018. Photo via PAIN.

Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography , “Through photo graphs, each family constructs a portrait-chronicle of itself— a portable kit of images that bears witness to its con nectedness.” Throughout the documentary, there’s the click ing sound of a slide carousel, projecting snapshots in black and white, light-leaked Polaroids, streaked, dog-eared self portraiture, family members, friends, drag queens, and her older sister Barbara, who committed suicide as an adolescent, and whose presence haunts Goldin’s life. Indeed, the docu mentary title is taken from a psychiatric evaluation of her sis ter during an institutionalization.

Pharma made and marketed OxyContin, the brand name for the opioid Oxycodone. Introduced in 1996 for pain management, OxyContin is more than twice as potent as morphine. It carries a high risk for addiction when taken in large doses or combined with alcohol or illicit drugs such as heroin or cocaine. The Sacklers aggres sively marketed OxyContin with total disregard for its addic tive properties. They concealed information about the abuse of OxyContin, even knowing that the pills were being crushed and Steven F. Dansky, an activist and documentarian, is a frequent con tributor to TheG&LR . 50

TheG & LR Continued on page 49