Nan Goldin is one of the most eminent photographers of our times, and today lives and works between New York, Paris and Berlin. Given her first camera at the age of 15, she began taking Polaroids of herself and her friends at a hippie commune. In 1972 she moved in with a group of queens in Boston, starting her lifelong obsession with photographing queer and transgender communities. In 1978 Goldin moved to New York City, where she presented slideshows in nightclubs and underground cinemas; her best known, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency," was published as a landmark book in 1986. In the nineties Goldin relocated to Berlin where she published A Double Life with David Armstrong and the first edition of The Other Side. In 2000 she moved to Paris, where she was invited to create site-specific works at the Louvre in 2010 and in Versailles in 2019. She divided her time between Paris and Berlin and in 2016 landed in New York. In 2018 Goldin and her colleagues founded P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), a direct action group advocating for harm reduction and education to address the stigma of addiction and the mounting overdose crisis. The book has been an important medium for Goldin over the decades; her publications with Steidl include The Beautiful Smile (2008), Diving for Pearls (2016) and The Other Side (2019).

This Will Not End Well is the first book to present a comprehensive overview of Nan Goldin's work as a filmmaker. Accompaning the retrospective show and tour of the same name, organized by Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the book draws from the nearly dozen slideshows and films Goldin has made from thousands of photographs, film sequences, audio tapes and music tracks. The stories told range from the trauma of her family history to the portrayal of her bohemian friends, to a journey into the darkness of addiction.
By focusing exclusively on slideshows and video installations, This Will Not End Well aims to fully embrace Goldin's vision of how her work should be experienced. The book retains the presentation of the slide shows by showing all images in the same format on a black background and sequenced as they are in the sources. The 20 texts, of which the major part are newly commissioned by Goldin, complement and deepen the intention of her work.
Co-published with Moderna Museet, Stockholm