Born in Madison, Wisconsin, 1951. Now lives in Reno, Nevada. An associate professor of art at the University of Nevada at Reno, Goin spent 1991–92 as artist-in-residence at the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Goin's recent publications include Tracing the Line: A Photographic Survey of the Mexican-American Border (1987), Nuclear Landscapes (1991), and Stopping Time: A Rephotographic Survey of Lake Tahoe (1992). His work was included in "Polemical Landscapes," California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside. An exhibition of his called "Peter Goin: The Land as Witness," was shown at the Baltimore Museum of Art (1991).

Merry A. Foresta, Stephen Jay Gould, and Karal Ann Marling Between Home and Heaven: Contemporary American Landscape Photography (Washington, D.C. and Albuquerque, New Mexico: The National Museum of American Art in association with the University of New Mexico Press, 1992)