“I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I\u2019ve lost.” \u2013 Nan Goldin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nNow a celebrated American artist, Nan Goldin first broke into the art scene in 1986 with “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, a deeply personal visual diary narrating the struggle for intimacy and understanding between her friends, family and lovers. Originally presented as a slideshow accompanied by the music of the Velvet Underground, James Brown, Nina Simone, Charles Aznavour and others, the diary was first created simply to entertain Nan’s friends \u2013 many of whom were part of the hard-drugs subculture in New York’s Lower East Side. Desirous of life \u2013 they partied, got high, fought, had sex, contracted AIDS and, ironically, faded away.
\nCurrently on display at the MoMA,\u00a0 “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” is being presented in its original 35mm format, along with photographs from the museum\u2019s collection that also appear as images in the slideshow. Opening the installation is a selection of materials from the artist\u2019s archive, including posters and flyers announcing early iterations of\u00a0the work.
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_1.jpg\")
“Rise and Monty Kissing, New York City”, 1980, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2008, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/8? (39.4 x 58.7 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_10.jpg\")
“Buzz and Nan at the Afterhours, New York City”, 1980, Nan Goldin Silver dye bleach print, printed 2008, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/4? (39.4 x 59 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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A frank depiction of love and loss<\/h2>\n
The project was first publicly shown at New York\u2019s Whitney Biennial in 1985 and was published as a photo book the following year. Being in the midst of a maelstrom while trying to keep herself afloat, Nan Goldin used photography to create a physical sense of memory, her work becoming an invocation of a time and place though permeated with a deep sense of loss. Titled after a song in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill\u2019s \u201cThe Threepenny Opera\u201d, Goldin\u2019s Ballad is a downtown opera itself.
\nOver the past 25 years, the impact of the book exists not only in photography, but also within a social context. Helping to raise awareness around subjects such as homosexuality and AIDS, the work is now revered as a contemporary classic.
\nGoldin’s open, frank style of narration and dense colour make the viewer go beyond the surface of the photograph to encounter a subterranean intensity. Through a deeply honest and personal record of her life and the lives of Nan’s friends, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” reveals Goldin\u2019s personal odyssey, as well as a universal understanding of the human enigmas accompanying our lives \u2013 passion, struggle, autonomy, dependency, love and loss.<\/p>\n
\n“I survive by taking pictures.” – Goldin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_3.jpg\")
“Nan One Month After Being Battered”, 1984, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2008, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/8? (39.4 x 58.7 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_5.jpg\")
“Max and Richard, New York City”, 1983, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2006, 15 9\/16 x 23 1\/16? (39.6 x 58.5 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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The traumatic\u00a0background behind Nan’s Ballad<\/h2>\n
Photography, as Nan Goldin has often attested, has not only illuminated her life but also saved her soul. “Every time I go through something scary or traumatic,” she once said, “I survive by taking pictures.” The traumatic experiences came early in her life. Born Nancy Goldin into a middle-class Jewish family in Lexington, a suburb of Boston, she was the youngest of four children, with two brothers and a sister. Goldin was very close to her sister, Barbara, who from an early age rebelled against the respectability of American middle class. She would witness her sister\u2019s growing anger and pain until Barbara committed suicide at the age of 18.
\nWhen Goldin moved to New York at the end of the seventies she began making photographs of those in her immediate environment, creating a body of work that later would become “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”. With an intense relationship between photographer and subject, Goldin would even refer to her subjects as her “family”. “Bonded not by blood, but by a similar morality, the need to live fully and for the moment,” Goldin wrote later. In discovering and admiring this surrogate family, Goldin was also acknowledging her sister, who, as she once put it, “was born at the wrong time and had no tribe, no other people like her.”
\nNan Goldin\u2019s story of urban life on the edge was the swan song of a turbulent and poignant time in New York\u2019s history that reached its peak in the early ’80s. The artist\u2019s work captures an essential element of humanity that is transcendent of all struggles: the need to connect.
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_2.jpg\")
“The Parents\u2019 Wedding Photo, Swampscott, Massachusetts”, 1985, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2006, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/8? (39.4 x 58.7 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_11.jpg\")
“Trixie on the Cot, New York City”, 1979, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2008, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/8? (39.4 x 58.7 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_9.jpg\")
“Nan and Dickie in the York Motel, New Jersey”, 1980, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2008, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/8? (39.4 x 58.7 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_4.jpg\")
“Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City”, 1983, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2006, 15 1\/2 x 23 3\/16? (39.4 x 58.9 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_8.jpg\")
“David and Butch Crying at Tin Pan Alley, New York City”, 1981, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2009, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/8? (39.4 x 58.7 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_7.jpg\")
“Nan on Brian\u2019s Lap, Nan\u2019s Birthday, New York City”, 1981, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2008, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/8? (39.3 x 58.7 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_12.jpg\")
Left: “C.Z. and Max on the Beach, Truro, Massachusetts”, 1976, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2006, 23 1\/8 x 15 1\/2? (58.7 x 39.4 cm). Right: “The Hug, New York City”, 1980, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2008, 23 1\/8 x 15 1\/2? (58.7 x 39.4 cm). Images Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin.<\/p>\n
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/moma_goldin_6.jpg\")
“Philippe H. and Suzanne Kissing at Euthanasia, New York City”, 1981, Nan Goldin. Silver dye bleach print, printed 2008, 15 1\/2 x 23 1\/8? (39.4 x 58.7 cm). Image Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. \u00a9 2016 Nan Goldin<\/p>\n