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Nan Goldin

Vivienne in the Green Dress, NYC, 1980

Description

Maker

Title

Vivienne in the Green Dress, NYC

Year

1980

Medium

Color chromogenic print

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Dimensions

Image: 49.7 x 33.4 cm (19 9/16 x 13 1/8 inches)

Type

Credit

Walter H. Kimball Fund

Object Number

2003.8

Projects & Publications

Publications

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Any distance between us

July 17, 2021 - March 13, 2022

“It was important to me, the way I developed, that I didn’t stay in my nuclear family. It’s also why my friends have always been my family. I mean it’s become a trite kind of statement—‘the chosen family’—but when I first wrote about it in 1985 in the Ballad [of Sexual Dependency] book, it wasn’t trite then. It was still a kind of new notion to people.... They’re the most important to me in the world, my friends. More important than family, lovers, my career.”
–Nan Goldin, 2017

This photograph presents the artist’s longtime friend Vivienne Dick, an Irish filmmaker whom she met in New York in 1978. It is emblematic of Goldin’s candid and unposed views of the lives of her circle of friends, often in the most private settings in their homes.

Facing Artists

February 27 - July 31, 2009

Nan Goldin gained international recognition in the 1980s for The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a series of intensely personal color portraits of herself and friends
that was first presented as a slide show in downtown New York clubs and bars. This portrait, also known as Vivienne in the green dress, NYC, depicts the experimental filmmaker Vivienne Dick (Irish, born 1950) and appeared among the images in that continually updated autobiographical work. By adopting the snapshot style, Goldin, who thinks of her subjects as family, draws viewers into the intimacy of her relationships.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Vivienne in the Green Dress, NYC with the accession number of 2003.8. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.