“A Double Life” is a collaborative visual memoir that chronicles the twenty-year friendship between photographers Nan Goldin and David Armstrong. Met as teenagers in Boston in the late 1960s, the two artists document their “extended family” of friends, lovers, and allies within the New York and European underground scenes. The book is structured as a dialogue, juxtaposing Goldin’s intimate, color-saturated snapshots—often associated with her landmark “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”—against Armstrong’s more formal and austere black-and-white portraits. Together, they create a poignant portrait of a generation scarred by the AIDS epidemic, drug abuse, and social upheaval, while celebrating the enduring power of creative and emotional solidarity.
