image by
Nan Goldin
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor,
Coney Island Wax Museum, 1981
As a student “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” by Nan Goldin
was one of the books important to me.
She was talking about love and pain, hopes and disappointments,
sex and desire.
Then somewhere along the road, I fell out of love with her work.
Looking at her images again,
I sense now that in her debut book
she hadn’t yet developed a consistent language,
and that some of her images
only were merely illustrating her ideas about the topic.
Photography has to tell something about a secret
without giving it away.
Still, she was the first, as far as I know,
to deal inside the world of photography
with the complicated relationship between men and women,
and her position, with all it drawbacks,
is still an outstanding one.
