Beauty, Bloodshed and Body

In All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), we get an intimate look into the life of activist, artist and lover Nan Goldin’s art. I first watched this documentary in the Triskel cinema in Cork after hearing a short summary of it online. The idea of a film documenting both the life and activism of an artist as well as exploring their art and lived experience sounded inspiring and daring, I couldn’t have been more correct. The human body is a core element of this documentary, utilised as an artistic tool in the photography of Goldin, as well as acknowledged as a subject of exploitation by both malicious individuals and more importantly the Pharmaceutical industry.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed uses its unique format and implementation of Nan’s art to examine the human experience in vivid and palpable detail. In the documentary Goldin discusses her desire to photograph a woman she loved, she believes she used photography as a substitute for sex, going further to state it’s better than sex. Many of Nan’s photographs explore sexuality and queer identities by displaying nudity and a free-spirited attitude towards sex. By photographing queer people and their bodies and actions Nan is able to immortalise many who died during the Aids crisis and allow us to observe them from the future, to allow them to be seen now, when at the time they lived, to be perceived usually meant danger.

Nan’s photography portrayed the human body in its’ most vulnerable states. At one point in the documentary Goldin shows photos she took of herself in the hospital after being brutally beaten by her partner at the time. Goldin claims she took the photos of her bruised and cut face in order to act as a reminder of how badly she had been hurt in case she ever tried to return to that relationship. Goldin once again uses the human body as an artistic tool yet this time it is not in an exclamation of joy or pleasure but rather as a raw and powerful warning.

In Nan Goldin’s activism (which is also discussed by the documentary) she once again uses the body as a warning. The documentary covers Nan and her group P.A.I.N  (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) as they protest against the Sackler family and the fortune the Sackler’s have made off of selling opioids and the lobbying they have done to make them more accessible. P.A.I.N stages many different forms of protest throughout the documentary but one of particular note is that of the ‘Die-in’, a type of protest where the protesting group pretends to be corpses in a public area in order to draw attention to their cause. In doing these ‘Die-in’ protests Nan is evoking the idea of a corpse, using human bodies as a method of evoking thoughts and questions from the public as to why they are protesting, to ask ‘what could have caused this?’. The human body is many things in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, an artistic tool, a protestors weapon and a valuable part of ourselves we all must take care of and protect at all costs.

Bibliography

Poitras, Laura, director. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. Participant and HBO Documentary Films, 2022. Film.

Berman, Judy, ‘If You Watch One More Oscar Movie, Make It All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’, Time, 9-4-2024, https://time.com/6261100/all-the-beauty-and-the-bloodshed-review/

O’Hagan, Sean, ‘Nan Goldin: ‘I wanted to get high from a really early age’, The Guardian, 23-4-2014, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/23/nan-goldin-photographer-wanted-get-high-early-age