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Arts Intel Report

Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

Nan Goldin, Kiki and Scarpota, West Berlin, 1984.

17-19 Davies St, London W1K 3DE, United Kingdom

“My desire is to preserve the sense of people’s lives,” the renowned photographer Nan Goldin has said, “to endow them with the strength and beauty I see in them. I want the people in my pictures to stare back.” And stare back they certainly do. Goldin made her name with candid, deeply personal portraits. She set out to capture the people she loved—it was a way of holding them close—and did so most notoriously in “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.” The series was shot between 1973 and 1986, and it documents a queer generation later ravaged by AIDS. Forty years on, Goldin is presenting the entire body of work again—in a very different context and a very different time. —Elena Clavarino

Photo courtesy the artist and Gagosian © Nan Goldin

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