For the first time on British soil, the complete collection of Nan Goldin's landmark photographic series, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, is being presented to the public. The exhibition, featuring all 126 images from the seminal work, opens at the Gagosian gallery in London and will run until 21 March 2026.
A Raw Diary of a Lost Era
Created between 1973 and 1986, the project is widely considered Goldin's magnum opus. It offers an unflinching and intimate exploration of gender, intimacy, power, and addiction within her immediate circle in the downtown New York scene. Goldin herself described the work as "the diary I let people read." The series first gained attention as a slideshow presented in New York nightclubs and art spaces, before being published as a photobook by Aperture in 1986.
The photographs serve as a powerful historical record, capturing a specific moment of artistic freedom and personal exploration that was irrevocably shattered by the AIDS crisis. Goldin reflects that the 1980s held "a certain freedom, and a sense of immortality, that ended with that decade." She poignantly adds, "Aids cracked the earth. We lost a whole generation. We lost a culture."
Love, Addiction and the Quest for Memory
Central to the work is its examination of human relationships. Goldin delves into the complexities of coupling, suggesting that "love can be an addiction," stimulating the same part of the brain as heroin or chocolate. She speaks of a world she and her friends built, "where friends could replace family," offering an alternative to traditional, often toxic, expectations.
The artist's intention was to create a truthful record immune to the softening effects of nostalgia. "I wanted to make a record of my life that nobody could revise," she states, aiming to capture "what things really looked like and felt like and smelled like." She views the cumulative effect of the images as akin to real memory—an endless, sensory flow, as opposed to a safe, encapsulated story.
A Lasting Legacy and London Showcase
Four decades after its publication, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency continues to resonate profoundly. Goldin notes that people have told her they moved to New York because of her work, finding in it a blueprint for a different kind of life. She even shares that "somebody told me recently my work averted their suicide."
While the series is often said to focus on marginalised people, Goldin firmly rejects that framing. "We were never marginalised. We were the world. We were our own world," she asserts, explaining that she aimed to make the subjects of her photos "into superstars."
The London exhibition represents a significant moment for UK audiences to engage with this defining work in full. It reaffirms, as Goldin puts it, that the "desire for transformation and the difficulty of connection and coupling are still true to our world." The enduring power of the Ballad lies in its raw honesty, preserving the fearlessness, wildness, and ultimate tragedy of a generation, ensuring its legacy remains vibrantly alive for new viewers to discover.
