NONFICTION - May 5, 1996

THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDENCY by Nan Goldin (Aperture Books: $27.50; 148 pp.) It’s been said that love is an intermingling of pity and desire; Nan Goldin’s intensely personal photographic diary of intimate relationships shared by herself and her friends seems firmly grounded in that belief.

First published in 1986 and reissued now in a 10th anniversary edition, Goldin’s gritty visual record of New York’s bohemian community of the ‘70s and ‘80s dispels, on a purely visual level, the fantasy and illusion associated with romantic love. On a deeper level, however, fantasies of every stripe surely burn within all her subjects--it is, after all, our dreams that drive us to seek each other out.

Opening with a moving introduction by Goldin, the book is comprised of 130 color images shot between 1976 and 1985, which are loosely organized in groups. The photographs segue from heterosexual couples, women alone, men alone, men in couples and in groups, solitary women crying or displaying scars and bruises, women together, and children alone or in groups.

With the exception of a scattering of pictures of elderly couples, Goldin’s subjects all reside in a world that’s hip and a little rough. We see gays, straights, transvestites, punk rockers, skinheads and valiant young women in thrift-store party dresses as they get tattooed, cook up heroin, drink, dance and make love. Often depicted alone in cheap hotel rooms, Goldin’s subjects seem to be at war with themselves, hungry for life, and willing to take whatever risks are necessary in the pursuit of it.

Among the more disturbing images included is a self-portrait by the author shortly after being beaten by her former boyfriend (above). Goldin was nearly blinded by the beating and it’s a tough picture to look at, however, her willingness to position herself squarely at the center of the turbulent world she evokes is central to the book’s power.

A potent reminder of the fact that love is a learn-as-you-go process nobody ever masters, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” interprets intimate relationships as a clumsy collision of tenderness and calculation, pain and pleasure, submission and domination. Closing with an image of a pair of empty beds, followed by a pair of twin graves, it suggests that every union is sacred in its capacity to dispel, if only for a second, the loneliness suffered by all of us, solitary prisoners of our own consciousness.