Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC
Photograph
Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC
From The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
1983
Silver dye bleach print
Image: 15 3/8 × 23 9/16 in. (39.1 × 59.8 cm)
Paper: 19 15/16 × 24 in. (50.6 × 61 cm)
Purchase with funds from the Charina Foundation
1988.0615.0001
Inscriptions Inscribed in ink on print, verso: NG. 010.1
TextInitially exhibited as a 45-minute slideshow of over seven hundred photographs, Nan Goldin’s seminal photo project The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a visual diary that chronicles the lives of the artist and her friends—her so-called “tribe”—in New York’s Lower East Side during the late 1970s and the early 1980s, an era plagued by the AIDS epidemic and drug addiction. Nan and Brian on the bed, NYC is perhaps the most widely recognizable photograph in Goldin’s Ballad and has been featured on the cover of every edition of the book since it was first published in 1986. Together in the frame, the artist and her then-boyfriend remain adjacent yet alienated from each other, highlighting one of the project’s driving themes.
Lisa Hostetler, Ph.D.
Curator in Charge, Department of Photography
Label for A History of Photography [Rotation 1]
May 9–September 28, 2014
Lisa Hostetler, Ph.D.
Curator in Charge, Department of Photography
Label for A History of Photography [Rotation 1]
May 9–September 28, 2014
