Ballad of Sexual Dependency

When Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency came out in 1986, the world recognized a new kind of photography that was at once diaristic, confessional, graphic, abject, celebratory and tribal. The photographs described a lifestyle that was "visceral, charged and seething with a raw appetite for living," and the book is now not only a classic of the liberated pre-AIDS era, but one of the most important of the twentieth century. Published by Aperture, it is included in the National Gallery of Art's current show, From the Library: Photobooks After Frank, and it is part of our own Essential Photography Library. Featured image is "Cookie with Max in the hammock, Provincetown, Mass, 1977."