Nan Goldin Talks Putting Intimate Gucci Campaign Photos Up for Sale at Gagosian

LONDON — American photographer Nan Goldin is a deep thinker and extremely selective about what she puts her name to.

This fall she shot Gucci’s “We Will Always Have London” campaign featuring Debbie Harry and Kelsey Lu that scooped up a special recognition at the Fashion Awards on Monday night and now she’s putting six photographs from the campaign up for sale in small editions of only seven with Gagosian with a starting price of $28,000.

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The sale will take place in six months time.

“The [images] transcend fashion for me, they’re not just commercial work, especially the ones of the trans couple in bed and in the hall; I had a relationship to them that was beyond fashion. I really felt them. I actually started crying when I was photographing them making love. It was the most tender that I’ve ever seen people be with each other, seriously,” Goldin said in an interview from Paris.

Massima and Gabe in the Hall, LA, 2024
Massima and Gabe in the Hall, L.A., 2024.

It’s been 10 years since the photographer worked on a fashion campaign.

The images she took for Gucci feature singer and cellist Kelsey Lu sitting with a giant Blondie bag in front of Bernardo Castello’s painting “The Penitent Magdalen” at Boughton Manor; models Yanan Wan and Alaato Jazyper looking in the mirror wearing matching burgundy outfits shot at the Rivoli Ballroom in London; another image of Alaato sitting on a red sofa at the manor; a dog called Java playing on the grounds of Boughton Manor, and intimate photographs of the trans couple Massima and Gabe on a bed and in a hallway.

“I only take good pictures if I love the people or if I find them very touching like [Massima and Gabe]. I don’t direct anybody [on set], I let them be and let them find themselves in the situation,” Goldin said.

She didn’t anticipate that the project would lead to becoming so sentimental for her.

Alaato on the Red Sofa, Boughton Manor, England, 2024
Alaato on the Red Sofa, Boughton Manor, England, 2024.

“The job came through my agent Jae Choi and it was a very busy summer for me because I was preparing my show at Gagosian. It was really an intense time and I was in a very extreme state,” said Goldin, who did part of the casting for the campaign video, while Gucci’s creative director Sabato De Sarno cast Lu.

Francis, the dancing boy in the campaign video, is also Goldin’s archivist for her studio.

“I didn’t know that Alaato was a high fashion model. I probably would have approached her differently and it probably wouldn’t have worked,” she said.

Lu with Magdalene, Boughton Manor, England,, 2024
Lu with Magdalene, Boughton Manor, England, 2024.

Goldin had complete creative freedom on set and on the end product. She oversaw the final edit, the set design that was produced by Shona Heath and the styling that was put together by Francesca Burns.

The photographer is sincere and genuine when she talks about the team she worked with on the Gucci campaign. “I truly couldn’t have done it without these people,” she said in a follow-up WhatsApp text, in which she praised everyone on set from her photo assistants Max Cramer and Brandon English to makeup artists Guy Furrow and Diane Kendal, hairstylist Jimmy Paul, artistic director Riccardo Zanola, producer Clare Carter and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme.

Yanan and Alaato in the Mirror, Rivoli Ballroom, London, 2024
Yanan and Alaato in the Mirror, Rivoli Ballroom, London, 2024.

The photographer said she grew up reading French and Italian Vogue in the ‘70s and went to Goodwill every weekend and got old clothes.

“We were constantly consumed with fashion from the Hollywood period of Edith Head,” said Goldin, who admired the works of Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton.

She previously shot a campaign for Bottega Veneta in 2010 that took cues from her famous 1985 slide show exhibition “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” followed by a Jimmy Choo one in 2011 and a book with Dior and Rizzoli in 2013 called “1000 Lives” starring Robert Pattinson.

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