The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
Nan Goldin
Aperture
English
Hardback
144 pages
261 x 237 mm
2012
ISBN 9781597112086
First published in 1986, Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a visual diary chronicling the struggles for intimacy and understanding among the friends and lovers whom Goldin describes as her tribe.
These photographs described a lifestyle that was visceral, charged and seething with a raw appetite for living, and the book soon became the swan song for an era that reached its peak in the early 1980s. Twenty-five years later, Goldin’s lush color photography and candid style still demand that the viewer encounter their profound intensity head-on. As she writes: Real memory, which these pictures trigger, is an invocation of the color, smell, sound and physical presence, the density and flavor of life.
Through an accurate and detailed record of Goldin’s life, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency records a personal odyssey as well as a more universal understanding of the different languages men and women speak. The book’s influence on photography and other aesthetic realms has continued to grow, making it a classic of contemporary photography. This anniversary edition features all-new image separations produced using state-of-the-art technologies and specially prepared reproduction files, which offer a lush, immersive experience of this touchstone monograph
(source: https://aperture.org/books/the-ballad-of-sexual-dependency/)
About the Artist
First as a teenager in Boston in the 1960s, then in New York starting in the 1970s, Nan Goldin has taken intensely personal, spontaneous, sexual, and transgressive photographs of her family, friends, and lovers. In 1979 she presented her first slideshow in a New York City nightclub, and her richly colored, snap-shot-like photographs were soon heralded as a groundbreaking contribution to fine art photography. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency—the name she gave her ever-evolving show—eventually grew into a forty-five-minute multimedia presentation of more than 900 photographs, accompanied by a musical soundtrack, and published as an award-winning book.
(source https://fraenkelgallery.com/shop/ill-be-your-mirror)
About the Publisher
Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online.
Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as “common ground for the advancement of photography,” Aperture today is a multi-platform publisher and center for the photo community. From the base in New York, they produce, publish, and present a program of photography projects, locally and internationally.
aperture
(source:https://aperture.org/about/)
