You Never Did Anything Wrong opens at the Hayward Gallery on November 24 this year, running until March 7 2027. It's Goldin's first UK institutional show since 2002, and as we previously reported, sees her turning her lens on classical art and sculpture. That in itself is an expected pivot for an artist best known for her human studies. But as we've just learned, that's only the half of it.
At the center of the show will be two films, both titled You Never Did Anything Wrong. Part I, shot on 16mm and centred on a solar eclipse, draws on an ancient myth of animals stealing the sun. Part II, made with filmmaker David Sherman, is built from found footage and damaged soundtracks lifted from nature documentaries of the 1960s and 70s, the decades of Goldin's own youth.
The title comes from a photograph Goldin took of a pet's gravestone in Lisbon in 1998, inscribed with the words "you never did anything wrong". It's long served as a kind of manifesto for her documentary work; here, reused as the title for two films almost entirely without people in them, it reads differently again.
Above all it's striking how consistent Goldin's method remains, even as her subject changes dramatically. In short, she's still working the way she always has: close attention, structural critique built from personal material, a refusal to look away from difficulty.
What's in the show?
Part I carries a dedication to Sulala Animal Rescue, the oldest animal rescue organisation in the Gaza Strip, which Goldin has worked with closely. This isn't the first time animals have entered Goldin's frame; photographs like My horse Roma, outside Luxor, Egypt (2003) and Electric Gaja, Paris (2010) show the same warmth and attention she brings to people, extended to other creatures. What's new is building an entire body of moving-image work around that gaze, rather than letting it surface occasionally within a wider body of human subjects.
Part II pushes the idea further. By reworking old nature documentary footage rather than shooting new material, Goldin explores how her generation was taught to see other species in the first place. The film moves from that critique into what's described as a lyrical ode to the land and the animals within it; one shadowed throughout by a sense of impending extinction. Both films feature scores by Mica Levi, with Part I also carrying music by Valerij Fedorenko.
Rachel Thomas, the Hayward's Roden chief curator, frames the shift as being more about continuity rather than rupture. "Shifting her focus from human relationships to animal consciousness and the natural world, Goldin brilliantly re-evaluates how we perceive other living beings," she says. The compassion is the same; only the frame has widened.
What photographers can learn here
For anyone building a practice around a single, well-honed subject, be that portraiture, street work or documentary reportage, Goldin's move offers a useful lesson. She's not swapping technique for a new one. She's asking whether the empathy and formal control she's spent decades developing on people can hold up when there's no human face to anchor it. (Spoiler: it can.)
The exhibition will also bring the UK premiere of Stendhal Syndrome (2024), pairing photographs of Goldin's friends and lovers with classical artworks, and a UK showing of Memory Lost (2019-2021) , her slide work on addiction, dedicated to the activist group P.A.I.N., which she founded. Upstairs, a new body of photographic prints connected to the You Never Did Anything Wrong films will be shown alongside a wider selection of Goldin's photography.
Tickets are on sale to Southbank Centre members now, and are available to the general public from Friday 17 July. Full-price tickets cost £19, with a £7.50 offer running for the exhibition's opening fortnight, and Under-30s subscribers eligible for half-price entry.
Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong is at Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London, from 24 November to 7 March 2027.
