Nan Goldin’s first memory of David Armstrong is from their youth: as she recalled to me in conversation this summer, he was ‘standing there, like a graceful doe’. From there unfolded a lifelong entanglement – through their art school years; through long absences and inevitable reunions; across decades and continents.
Goldin and Armstrong wrote in the preface to their 1994 photobook A Double Life that their friendship was akin to an old marriage without the sex: enduring, impossible to sever. Goldin spoke to me of Armstrong’s magnetism, the way his attention could make you glow, become who you wanted to be. eir friendship found its way into their individual practices, seen in their shared love of Peter Hujar’s portraiture, for instance, as well as a series of landscape photographs Armstrong once produced, inspired by looking at the backs of Goldin’s photographs. e images gathered here – photo booth strips, Polaroids, roo op portraits and, later, images of Armstrong’s resolute gaze – trace this lasting exchange. Drawn from Goldin’s vast archive, they are evidence of what it means to witness another across time. Until Armstrong’s death in 2014, theirs was a bond that returned and returned. As Goldin once inscribed on the back of a photograph to her ‘Darling D’: you caught up w me again.
— Vanessa Peterson
Cover: David and Nan, Boston, n.d.. P. 3: David in bed, Leipzig, Germany, 1992. P. 4: David on the Bowery, NYC, 1991. P. 5: David and Tommy, Boston, 1973. P. 6 David at Grove Street, Boston, 1972. P. 7: David’s kitchen, NYC, 2014. P. 8: David at home, NYC, 2014. P 9: David in the van, Bad Herzfeld, Germany, 1992. P. 10: David in the playground, NYC, 1990. P. 11: David and Nan in hotel room, Hotel Amstel, Amsterdam, 1997. P. 12: David and Nan, Boston, n.d.. P. 13: David, Nan and Tommy, Boston, 1975. P. 14: David and Nan at a party, 1982. P. 15: David and Nan on the roof of the Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, 1992. P. 16: David and Nan at home, Berlin, 1992. Back page: Birthday card for David, 1979. All images courtesy: © Nan Goldin
