Honey on a Razorblade

Honey on a Razorblade presents four of Nan Goldin's most important works which she defines as films made out of stills and are seen here for the first time in their entirety in book form. Goldin has drawn from her archive of thousands of photographs, film clips, audio tapes and music tracks, allowing us to embrace the full vision of the artist and how her work should be experienced. The first volume "Memory Lost" shows the darkness of addiction and the claustrophobia of drugs, and is seen by Goldin as her most important piece since the seminal "Ballad of Sexual Dependency." "Sirens / Salome" is a single volume of two works comprised of found footage: "Sirens," about the experience of being ecstatically high and named after the Greek myth in which sailors are seduced by pleasure to their death; "Salome" explores temptation, destruction and the male gaze. In "Stendhal Syndrome" Goldin pairs her autobiographical images with photographs she made of paintings and sculptures from museums throughout the world, shaped around themes of love and desire. Honey on a Razorblade compellingly retains the presentation of these slideshows by showing all their images in the same format on a black background and sequenced as they are in the original form. Complementing these visual volumes is the reader "Heartbeat," comprising 36 texts commissioned by Goldin and many published here for the first time: the most comprehenisive, insightful and eloquent body of writing on her work to date.