Transience

Danielle L Goldstein began Transience fourteen years ago in an ancient hotel room in Spain. The room felt haunted, and Goldstein started thinking about the many souls that previously inhabited it. She wanted to document both the physical and metaphorical space, so she used herself as a placeholder. What started as a ghosted self-portrait of an “everywoman” evolved into a comprehensive photographic diary spanning hundreds of hotel rooms.  In 2017, personal upheaval through separation and divorce transformed the project's meaning. The earlier images, impersonal and carefully composed, reflected the order and surface perfection of her life then, while later photographs captured her palpable pain. In the years following her divorce, joy returned to her work, revealing how this collection had unconsciously documented her midlife journey through turbulence and rebirth. Transience is a beautiful and truly original testimony of conquering despair. Goldstein’s exquisite book, supplemented with thought-provoking and intimate essays written by her daughter Caroline, will offer joy, solace, and hope to anyone who is feeling challenged by their circumstances. 

Danielle L Goldstein is a New York City-based photographer. She holds an A.B. in history from Cornell University, and a J.D from Emory University. She discovered her passion for photography in midlife and has never looked back. Her work has been exhibited extensively in galleries in the USA, Europe and Asia, has been featured in numerous photography publications, and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York. It is also featured in the book Women Street Photographers (Prestel, 2021).  Caroline Goldstein is a writer and editor. She holds a B.A. in English and American Literature from New York University and an M.F.A. in Fiction from NYU, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. She is the author of The Wayside, under the name Caroline Wolff. She lives in downtown Manhattan.