Nan Donohoe was an Irish Travelling woman, one of Ireland's indigenous gypsies or "tinkers." Traditionally, they traveled the countryside making and repairing tinware, sweeping chimneys, selling small household wares, and doing odd-job work. Today, they live on the roadside in trailers and in government-built camps. Told largely in her own voice, Nan's saga begins in 1919 with her birth in a tent in the Irish Midlands; it follows her life in Ireland and England, in countryside and city slums, through adversity and adventure. Gmelch brings to her task not only the resources of anthropology, but the skill of a sensitive writer and a warmth that allows her to see Nan as a person, not a subject. What emerges is a human story, filled with cruelty and compassion, sorrow and humor, bad luck and good.

Nan Goldin is internationally recognized as one of today's leading photographers. Her photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including SFMOMA, California, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Museu Reina Sofia, Madrid. Born in Washington DC, Goldin grew up in Boston where she began taking photographs at the age of fifteen. She has since lived in New York, Bangkok, Berlin, Tokyo and Paris, amassing an extensive body of work that represents a fascinating photographic portrait of our time. Since the 1980s, Goldin has consistently created images that are intimate and compelling; they tell personal stories of relationships, friendships and identity, but simultaneously chronicle different eras and the passage of time. Her 'snapshot'-esque images of her friends - drag queens, drug addicts, lovers and family - are intense, searing portraits that, together, make a document of her life. Goldin herself has commented on her photographic style and philosophy, saying, 'My work originally came from the snapshot aesthetic ...Snapshots are taken out of love and to remember people, places, and shared times. They're about creating a history by recording a history'. Her work often breaks social taboos with its explicit exploration of relationships, sexuality and eroticism, and has also shown the devastating effect AIDS has had on her community of friends. Through its sequence of 55 images, Nan Goldin presents an overview of the photographer's entire career, and illustrates the development of the intimate and raw style for which Goldin has become internationally renowned.

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