On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of photography, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents The Ballad of Sexual Dependency by Nan Goldin, part of the Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Made between 1973 and 1986, the 126 images that make up the work constitute a reflection on issues such as gender, intimacy and power. The original structure of the project had been conceived by Goldin as a slide projection accompanied by music, and, before becoming the book published by Aperture in 1986, The Ballad was presented in clubs and public art exhibitions in New York. The photographs on display constitute the entire corpus collected in the volume, which, published in 1986, has reached its fortieth anniversary and its twenty-third reprint, representing a milestone in the history of photography books.
In the project, Goldin photographs the people who are part of her life and builds, through them, the collective portrait of an era. Born as an invitation to enter the artist's world, over time the images have become the testimony of what Goldin defines as "a lost generation".