American, born 1953, lives and works in the Bay Area.
Jim Goldberg has been exhibiting for over 30 years and his innovative use of image and text make him a landmark photographer of our times. He began to explore experimental storytelling and the potentials of combining image and text with Rich and Poor (1977-85), where he juxtaposed the residents of welfare hotel rooms with the upper class and their elegantly furnished home interiors to investigate the nature of American myths about class, power, and happiness. In Raised by Wolves (1985-95), he worked closely with and documented runaway teenagers in San Francisco and Los Angeles to create a book and exhibition that combined original photographs, text, home movie stills, snapshots, drawings, diary entries as well as single and multi-channel video, sculpture, found objects, light boxes and other 3-D elements. Goldberg’s current project focuses on migration, refugees and human trafficking in Europe. Open See (2003-present) is the first volume of an ongoing body of work that will continue to explore the ever-evolving European immigrant community. The work addresses their struggle to adapt to new European cultures and the reciprocal struggle of those cultures to adapt to them in turn. Open See remains within Goldberg’s multi-faceted and multimedia practice by using diverse formats to create a thickly interwoven, expressionistic narrative that tells a story from many points of view. The presentation is conceived as a layered, sensory experience that overwhelms the viewer and forces a consideration of artistic form and documentary practice. Goldberg's work is in numerous private and public collections including MoMA, SFMOMA, Whitney, Getty, LACMA, Corcoran, MFA Boston, Hallmark Collection, The High Museum, Library of Congress, MFA Houston, National Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.