You’re standing in a dark, cramped room. The air is thick with the smell of stale beer and cheap cigarettes. A slide projector clicks—that rhythmic, mechanical thwack-shhh—and a flash of saturated color hits the wall. You see a woman with a black eye, staring right through you. Then a couple tangling in a messy bed. Then a drag queen applying lipstick in a cracked mirror.
This isn't a gallery opening in 2026. It’s a dive bar in the Bowery, circa 1980. But honestly, even forty years later, the Ballad of Sexual Dependency Nan Goldin created hasn't lost an ounce of its bite.
While most "art" from the eighties feels like a dusty time capsule, Goldin’s masterpiece feels like a live wire. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s occasionally very hard to look at. But that’s exactly why we’re still talking about it.
It Was Never Supposed to Be "Fine Art"
The thing people get wrong about The Ballad is thinking Nan Goldin set out to make a famous book. She didn't.
She was just living.
Basically, Goldin started taking these photos because she was terrified of forgetting. She’s famously said that the camera was her way of touching people—a kind of caress. She lived in a world of "No Wave" music, post-Stonewall grit, and a chosen family of outsiders. These weren't models; they were her lovers, her roommates, and the people she did drugs with.
The work originally existed as a slideshow. She’d bring her carousel to clubs like Mudd Club or Cinema Studio, franticly changing the order of the slides while a soundtrack of The Velvet Underground, Maria Callas, and James Brown blasted over the speakers.
📖 Related: Why Grand Funk’s Bad Time is Secretly the Best Pop Song of the 1970s
It was a performance. It was a diary. It was, as she called it, "the diary I let people read."
The 126 Photos vs. the 700 Slides
If you go to a museum today—like the current 2026 exhibition at Gagosian in London—you’ll likely see the "standard" set of 126 photographs. But the actual Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a living thing. The original slideshow has grown to nearly 700 images. Goldin would add photos of friends who passed away and remove ones that didn't fit the vibe anymore.
It’s an opera of the mundane. You’ve got:
- Nan one month after being battered (1984): The most famous shot. Her eye is a puffy, red-and-purple mess. She’s wearing pearls. It’s the ultimate pivot point of the work—the moment where the "romance" of the scene hits a brick wall of reality.
- Cookie at the beach: A moment of pure, sun-drenched joy before the AIDS crisis started taking everyone.
- Empty beds and messy bathrooms: Proving that the spaces we leave behind say just as much as our faces.
The Raw Truth About "Sexual Dependency"
The title comes from Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. It’s about that weird, often toxic glue that keeps two people together even when they’re destroying each other.
Goldin wasn't interested in "good" photography in the technical sense. Many shots are blurry. The lighting is harsh, direct flash. Some are out of focus. But in the late 70s, this was a middle finger to the male-dominated world of "perfect" photography.
Men in the art world told her she wasn't a good photographer. She basically told them she didn't care. She was documenting a subculture that the rest of the world wanted to pretend didn't exist. Drag queens, junkies, and the queer "tribe" of the East Village weren't "subjects" to her. They were the world.
👉 See also: Why La Mera Mera Radio is Actually Dominating Local Airwaves Right Now
Why 2026 is Having a "Nan Goldin Moment"
It’s weirdly fitting that The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is seeing a massive resurgence right now.
We live in a world of filtered Instagram perfection and AI-generated "beauty." Everything is smooth. Everything is curated. Then you look at a Nan Goldin photo and see a stained mattress or a woman crying in a taxi, and it feels like a slap in the face. It’s real.
There's also the activism. You can't talk about The Ballad today without talking about Goldin’s fight against the Sackler family. If you haven't seen the documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, do it. It connects the dots between the friends she lost to AIDS in the 80s and the people she’s trying to save from the opioid crisis today.
She survived the heroin era, she survived a brutal relationship with a man named Brian (who appears throughout the Ballad), and she survived her own addiction to OxyContin.
She isn't just a photographer; she’s a witness.
Seeing the Work Today
If you’re looking to experience the Ballad of Sexual Dependency Nan Goldin curated, you have a few options this year:
✨ Don't miss: Why Love Island Season 7 Episode 23 Still Feels Like a Fever Dream
- Gagosian, Davies Street (London): They are showing the complete 126-print series through March 21, 2026. It’s the first time the whole set has been in the UK like this.
- Grand Palais (Paris): Her "This Will Not End Well" retrospective moves here in March 2026. This is the big one—it focuses on her moving-image work and slideshows.
- The Book: Honestly? Just buy the Aperture book. It’s in its 23rd printing for a reason. It’s the closest you’ll get to the intimacy of her original vision without flying to Paris.
A Legacy of Not Looking Away
What most people get wrong is thinking this work is "dark."
It’s actually full of love. It’s just a type of love that includes the hangovers, the fights, and the funerals. Goldin proved that you don't have to be "pretty" to be worthy of a photograph.
She captured a generation that was largely wiped out by AIDS, making her "diary" a historical record of a lost city. When you look at these photos, you aren't just looking at art; you're looking at people who lived, laughed, and suffered.
If you want to understand the modern obsession with "authentic" content, you have to start here. Before there were photo dumps or "get ready with me" videos, there was Nan Goldin with a Leica and a slide projector, showing us the parts of ourselves we usually hide.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Visit a Gallery: If you are in London before March 21, 2026, go to the Gagosian on Davies Street. Seeing these prints in person, at their original scale, changes how you perceive the grain and color of the Kodachrome film.
- Watch the Documentary: Stream All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022). It provides the essential political context for her work and explains why she moved from documenting addiction to fighting the institutions that profited from it.
- Study the Sequencing: If you get the book, don't just look at the pictures. Look at how they flow. Notice how a photo of a party is followed by a photo of a lonely room. Goldin is a master of "visual rhythm," and studying her sequencing is a masterclass for any aspiring storyteller or photographer.