“This Will Not End Well”, the touring Nan Goldin retrospective that was previously on show in Stockholm, Berlin and Milan and which is currently at the Grand Palais in Paris is not a conventional photography exhibition with prints mounted on a wall, but comprises five slideshows inside purpose-made, velvet-draped projection rooms. As a consequence, depending on what day and time you visit, you may have to queue three or more times: first to get into the Grand Palais and then to enter each of the installations. The slideshow format also enforces a set sequence and a rhythm. While I would have preferred browsing the photographs at my own leisure — lingering a bit longer here and skipping a few there — I enjoyed watching the slideshows while listening to the accompanying soundtracks, with songs by The Velvet Underground, The Communards, Charles Aznavour and Marianne Faithful among others. I should add that “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" was originally created as a slideshow and only later published as book.
The exhibition channels half a century of creation into a sustained elegy and lament for the lost. Faces of lovers, friends, and strangers resurface across works, growing familiar, almost intimate, with each reappearance. The landmark “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" (1981-2022) — 700 photographs scored to everything from Bellini's Casta Diva to The Velvet Underground and James Brown — still captivates, its rough edits and abrupt sequencing now radiating the handmade charm of a mixtape. Alongside it, "The Other Side" (1992-2021) celebrates transgender friends in portraits of defiant beauty, while “Memory Lost" (2019-2021) chronicles Goldin’s battle against the opioid crisis. In the more recent "Stendhal Syndrome" (2024) Goldin reframes her own work with references to Ovid's Metamorphoses and images of paintings and sculptures taken at the Louvre, the Prado, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Galleria Borghese. I skipped "Sirens" (2019-2020), a collage of short clips from films including White Nights by Luchino Visconti, Satyricon by Federico Fellini and Screen Test by Andy Warhol, which is intended to render the experience of a drug trip, but which I found rather boring.
If you’re planning on visiting the exhibition I recommend starting with “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, then move on to “The Other Side” and then visit either “Stendhal Syndrome” or “Memory Lost”, wherever the queue is shortest.
Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well is at the Grand Palais in Paris until 21 June 2026.