Nan Goldin - images of innocence and experience

Nan Goldin’s seductive and seedily dark photographs, taken over the past forty years, invite us into a world of whore-houses, transvestites and drugs. This world belongs to Goldin and the friends and lovers with whom she has lived a life on the margins of American society.

Many of her photographs have been taken inside the rooms of houses she has shared and clubs she has visited. The glass covering each photograph on display at her current exhibition - Fireleap, at the Sprovieri Gallery, London (until 6 August) - acts as a window, allowing us to peer into an unknown and private world of glamour and trauma, sadness and destruction, while remaining safely on the outside. In displaying her autobiographical photographs and slideshows, she allows us to glimpse the underworld, where you might have been, or have sometimes wished to go, or barely knew existed.

Double-ex version 2 (2011), appears in the first and largest room of the gallery. The grid of double exposures present separate events brought together by chance. The overlaying of multiple images creates a sense of hazy confusion. The photographs show people laughing, drinking or in one case, looking directly back at you, returning your intrusive gaze. Despite photographing many friends, the image of an empty, un-made bed provides the most resounding impact - an overwhelming sense of loneliness.

A series of landscapes, previously never displayed by Goldin, contrast with the interior spaces of Empty Rooms, Berlin/Humburg (1983-1996). The landscapes are noteworthy in presenting an alternative to the inner city scenes upon which Goldin has characteristically focussed, but despite their seemingly alternative subject, both the landscapes and Empty Rooms feel the same sad sense of isolation.

Goldin’s latest slideshow, Fireleap, marks another turning point for the artist. Fireleap is comprised of images of the children of friends and Goldin’s godchildren which date from 1978 to the present day. With its focus on childhood innocence, it brings light to a body of work which has developed in the shadows of a dark world. The children suggest hope and incorruptibility, and yet, in true Goldin fashion, the notion of the future is accompanied by a sinister sense of foreboding.

Rachel Mulvaney