I just discovered Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency today at SFMOMA. The piece is presented as a 45 minute long slide installation with accompanying soundtrack. The series is a thoroughly personal body of work depicting the artist’s friends in intimate, everyday moments such as using the toilet, taking a bath, or performing sexual acts. The viewer feels like an unanticipated voyeur captured in the midst of an array of arrestingly private imagery. It is an eye opening series into the lives of Goldin’s friends but is also a group of images which chronicles a time and culture of ‘sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll’ in New York City throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s. In contrast to the glamour that one associates with this era Goldin reveals a soberingly honest perspective of the seedy side of life which inevitably becomes even more sobering when the series ends with somber images of tombstones and open caskets containing deceased friends due to the devastating effects of AIDS which plagued that time.
This is an extremely powerful and poignant series and for me personally, a long overdue discovery.
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