Cookie in her casket, NYC

Goldin’s intimate snapshots of friends and lovers document, in part, the sex practices and drug use which contributed to the spread of HIV in her community. This portrait comes from a series in which Goldin pays tribute to the actress and writer, Cookie Mueller (1949–1989), completed upon Mueller’s death from AIDS-related causes in 1989. Mueller was a frequent collaborator of filmmaker John Waters and wrote a column for the East Village Eye called “Ask Dr. Mueller.” Goldin commented, “I’d always believed that if I photographed anything or anyone enough, I would never lose them. With the death of seven or eight of my closest friends and dozens and dozens of my acquaintances, I realize there is so much the photograph doesn’t preserve. …It doesn’t preserve a life.