Nan Goldin. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
Gagosian, Davies Street, London
From January 13, 2026 until March 21, 2026
Nan Goldin’s career has been built from photographs made within friendships, relationships, and shared spaces, establishing her as a central figure in contemporary photography since the late 1970s. Born in Washington, D.C. in 1953, she began photographing her immediate surroundings as a teenager and later studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. This capturing style has stayed close, just like her photography. By the mid-1970s, Goldin had moved to New York, becoming closely associated with the downtown scene that formed around the Bowery, the Lower East Side, and later the East Village, and from there, her work developed outside traditional documentary or academic frameworks, shaped instead by proximity, friendship, and long-term personal relationships.
From the outset, Goldin’s early career was shaped by the social and cultural environments in which her work first circulated, presented in nightclubs and alternative spaces where photographs were shown sequentially and accompanied by music. Meaning was built collectively, through time, sequence, and repetition. At a time when photography was still largely marginal within contemporary art institutions, her work circulated through artist-run spaces and independent venues before entering museums and major collections.
“I don’t select people in order to photograph them; I photograph directly from my life. These pictures come out of relationships, not observation. They are an invitation to my world, but now they have become a record of the generation that was lost.”
Alongside her photographic practice, Goldin has published a number of significant books, first circulating her work in printed form. These include The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, The Other Side, and I’ll Be Your Mirror. Her work is held in major public collections internationally and has been the subject of numerous institutional exhibitions. Central to her career is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and it’s perhaps the work most closely associated with her name. First published by Aperture in 1986, following its earlier life as a slideshow, the project brings together 126 photographs made between 1973 and 1986 and drawn from Goldin’s immediate social world. The images move through domestic interiors, bars, bedrooms, and shared spaces, documenting friendships, romantic relationships, addiction, violence, and care—all sourced from lived experiences.
Presented in London in early 2026, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is shown in its entirety for the first time in the UK, installed at Gagosian’s Davies Street gallery. Here, the exhibition preserves the original scope and sequencing of the work. While individual images from The Ballad have circulated widely, the complete work is less frequently encountered as a single installation, and the London presentation maintains the full sequence, reflecting the way the project was first conceived and experienced.
Since its publication, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency has circulated widely and has entered major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art. Its presence within institutional contexts has confirmed its significance within the history of late twentieth-century photography, even as the work remains closely tied to the social and cultural conditions of New York in which it was made. This institutional afterlife has allowed the work to be encountered by successive audiences while retaining its connection to the city that shaped both its content and form. Goldin has described The Ballad as “The diary I let people read.” Reflecting on her method, she has said, “I don’t select people in order to photograph them; I photograph directly from my life. These pictures come out of relationships, not observation. They are an invitation to my world, but now they have become a record of the generation that was lost.” And this perfectly articulates the position her work occupies between personal record and historical document, and its rejection of photographic distance.
Seen in full, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency looks to sequence, and meaning is developed through repetition and proximity, as relationships unfold. The decision to present all the images preserves this internal logic and reflects the conditions under which the work was first shown. Although closely associated with downtown New York in the 1970s and 1980s, The Ballad has never functioned solely as a document of that period, instead, it records a generation that experienced freedom, risk, and intimacy, later marked by widespread loss during the AIDS crisis. It has since informed subsequent generations of photographers and maintained a sustained presence within the cultural landscape, offering an internal visual commentary on the intersection of authorship and personal experience. Its continued circulation points to a relevance that extends beyond its original context.
Goldin’s work has been widely referenced in discussions of later photographic practice, particularly where intimacy, autobiography, and social proximity are central concerns. Her influence is frequently noted in relation to photographers such as Wolfgang Tillmans, whose work similarly draws on friendship and everyday life, and Juergen Teller, who has spoken publicly about Goldin’s impact on his approach to both personal and fashion photography. Within fashion imagery, Corinne Day’s early work is often discussed in relation to Goldin’s photographs, particularly in its rejection of polish and its use of lived environments rather than constructed sets.
The transition from book to gallery brings the work back into the present. Scale, sequencing, and the wall become spatial considerations as images encounter one another, and the act of looking becomes durational. What was once private is made public. Seen in this form, the work presents relationships as they are lived, without summary or conclusion, continuing to linger as a record of intimacy and consequence.
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