Customer Reviews

Nan Goldin: The Ballad Of Sexual Dependency

5 star:		(5)
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2 star:		(1)
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It's really sad how Nan Goldin hasn't gottten a single intelligible review for her seminial work, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency." Her incredibly self-brutalizing protrayl of her life, friends, lovers, are just the sort of photographs we take when we want memories to cut. Most of the photographs are candid, fleshy, and almost dirtied with color. People copulate, hurt, masturbate, alienate each other with the sort of urbane nonchalance that people confused in their own lives inflict on others. In one particular self-portrait, Nan Goldin records her battered face directly after being battered by her lover, her bloodied eye matching her pasty lipstick. That one photograph can rip you to shreds if you let it. Originally, Nan Goldin showed "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" in a slideshow format, which probably has a different feel than the book does. While some of the photos in the book were a little weak in the grain, most of the photos are beautifully reproduced.

Nan Goldin captures what it's like to be human in a way that no one else can. Her friends---her family----feel pain and introspection and I felt lonely looking through the book but the rare moments of connection in a world where so many people are alone with their drug addiction, disease, unhappiness, are all the more moving.

Nan Golden achieves in this book a thing that is very difficult for most photographers to do well. She makes pictures of great power because they are connected to deep personal experiences, good moments and bad. The bridge of the gap between subject and photographer in herself helps bridge the gap between photograph and viewer.
Good Shtuff.l

I bought this book for my god daughter who is studying photography at uni. She was over the moon with the book. I was pleased with the cost and speed of delivery of the book.

this is one of the best collections of color photography i have seen. nan and her friends are beautiful and scary and strong and fun and sad. i have seen the slide show and bought the book when it was reprinted. go out and buy it! END

I'm glad I didn't buy this book, now that I've seen it. Although the reproduction quality of the photographs is very good, the photographs themselves aren't interesting to me and are even a bit distressing.

I haven't seen the film(s) or exhibitions about Nan's work though. There is some information about her work on the web - take a look at Yahoo.