Photographer Nan Goldin is one of the most important artists to document drag and trans life for over half a century. A new documentary examines her grassroots battle to stop the art world from taking money from the family behind Oxycontin, a prescription drug at the heart of America’s opioid crisis.

Goldin began photographing trans and drag performers and patrons at Boston gay bar The Other Side, in the 1970s. This led to decades of important documentation of gender diversity around the world through the AIDS crisis and up through the opioid crisis.

Her work was a strong influence on the so-called “heroin chic” look that took the fashion world in the 20th century. Goldin herself became addicted to opioids and saw first-hand how the drug ravaged and destroyed lives.

Via NPR:

She was later one of the earliest American artists to take on the AIDS epidemic, mounting a show in the late 1980s that drew national attention and controversy.

The Sackler family, meanwhile, was growing fabulously wealthy, first by selling Valium and then aggressively marketing Oxycontin.

Many of the same museums around the world that were beginning to collect Goldin’s photographs were also naming buildings after the Sacklers — in exchange for lavish donations.

The collision between the Sacklers and Goldin portrayed in this film came after Goldin’s recovery from years of opioid addiction, a time she describes as “a darkness of the soul.”

After reading about the Sacklers’ role pushing Oxycontin sales in a groundbreaking article in The New Yorker, Goldin decided to challenge their carefully curated public image as enlightened philanthropists.

The film has been on the festival circuit in a run-up to its wider release. Here’s a recent NYFF Q&A at Lincoln Center with Goldin and director Laura Poitras.

Watch.

Image: YouTube / NEON