US photographer Nan Goldin wins Hasselblad Award

Mar 8, 2007, 15:35 GMT

Stockholm - American photographer Nan Goldin hailed as 'one of the most significant photographers of our time' was Thursday named winner of the 2007 Hasselblad Award.

The international jury said Goldin has been 'documenting her own life and that of her friends - her extended family - for more than 30 years, focusing on the urban scene in New York and Europe in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, marked so dramatically by HIV and AIDS.'

Born 1953, Goldin began photographing aged 15 and staged her first exhibition of black and white photographs in the early 1970s.

The jury also noted that she uses 'photography as a memoir, as a means of protection against loss and as an act of preservation responds to the needs of our times.'

Goldin's work has often evolved around the themes of 'Life, Loss, Obsession,' also the title of one of her exhibitions.

The award worth 500,000 kronor (70,000 dollars) was to be presented along with a gold medal on November 10 at a ceremony in the west coast city of Gothenburg.

An exhibition on her work would also open at the Hasselblad Centre.

The centre and the award were named after Victor Hasselblad (1906-1978) who invented the Hasselblad cameras that have been used in NASA space programmes and by a number of famed photographers.

Former Hasselblad Award winners include Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, Richard Avedon, Sebastiao Salgado, Hiroshi Hamaya, Susan Meiselas, Ernst Haas, Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, and Lennart Nilsson. Last year it was awarded to South African David Goldblatt.

More information on: www.hasselbladfoundation.org.