Attachment of molecules and proteins to surfaces is of great interest for the development of a large variety of applications. We present herein a novel approach to efficiently couple a molecule of choice to biological building blocks. We synthesized and employed a new derivative of 5-bromo-7-nitroindoline to attach nucleophilic molecules and proteins to gold surfaces by photochemical activation. The reaction can be seen as a photoactivated alternative to the activated ester type chemistries that are commonly used to attach proteins or molecules to surfaces. We characterize the reaction by UV-vis and NMR spectroscopy, and as test of principle experiment, we show that we can attach proteins to surfaces and demonstrate that we can functionalize gold nanoparticles by this optically induced cross-linking reaction.