Nan Goldin Pictures thirtieth Anniversary Marketing campaign for Acne Studios

Acclaimed photographer and activist Nan Goldin shot an advert marketing campaign for Acne Studios to mark the Swedish vogue model’s thirtieth anniversary. 

For the marketing campaign, Goldin photographed “the people in [Acne’s] creative family,” in accordance with the model. The individuals in her footage had been “chosen to capture Acne Studios’ founding spirit: one of free expression, creative experimentation and proud individuality,” a nod to the corporate’s former acronym which stood for “Ambition to Create Novel Expressions,” per a press launch. 

“I have been inspired by Nan and her work for years,” Acne cofounder and inventive director Jonny Johansson stated in a press release. “So, when we realized we had 30 years to celebrate, it felt like the right moment to ask her. I wanted an icon, but I also wanted something very intimate and personal. She does that.”

Goldin’s sitters embrace artists Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Peter Schlesinger, and Sandra Poulson, in addition to actor and musician Juliette Lewis, musician Ellie Rowsell, mannequin and photographer Guinevere Van Seenus, photographer Jordan Hemingway, actor and mannequin Raya Martigny, and actor Rila Fukushima. The launch additionally teased yet another picture of “another friend whose portrait will be revealed at a later date.” 

“The subjects are people from our universe – individuals we have collaborated with, spoken to, or had some kind of exchange with over the years. I wanted friends, not models,” Johansson stated. 

They have been photographed carrying denim, which Acne described as “the brand’s foundational material.” When Acne was based in 1996, Johansson and his cofounders gifted 100 pairs of uncooked denim denims (with pink stitching on the seams) to their circle of artists and creatives.

Of the material alternative, Johansson stated, “Denim is the perfect canvas. We’re rooted in it. It’s a material of today that also ages and becomes something else through its story. Denim personalises itself through wear – it becomes yours.” 

“Denim is part of my everyday wear inside the studio, or out for dinner,” stated Chase, who created the runway set for the home’s Spring/Summer 2025 present at Paris Fashion Week. “I love its multifaceted materiality.”

Goldin has lengthy partnered with a spread of vogue manufacturers, together with RVCA (in 2010), Rodarte (2012), Medea (2018), Supreme (2018), and Gucci (2024). The Gucci collaboration concerned Goldin photographing an advert marketing campaign that featured musicians Debbie Harry and Kelsey Lu. She subsequently confirmed these six pictures at Gagosian; every picture had an version of seven with costs beginning at $28,000 for a print.

Goldin is equally recognized for her photographs, most notably The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1985), and her activism. She based the advocacy group P.A.I.N. in 2017 as a approach to battle the opioid disaster, which she personally survived, and to name consideration to how the Sackler household made cash from it. She and her group staged numerous protests in museums to name consideration to how the Sacklers had “washed their blood money through the halls of museums and universities around the world,” as she wrote in Artforum.

She additionally has develop into one of the crucial vocal artwork world supporters of Palestine, memorably giving a speech on the opening of her exhibition at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie in 2024 wherein she labeled Israel’s struggle in Gaza a genocide. She gave an analogous speak in Arles, France, in 2025. Last fall, she advised Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil that “my career tanked—my market tanked from one day to the next because of my support of Palestine.”