Gagosian is exhibiting<\/a> all 126 prints from the book, its first full showing in the United Kingdom. But the \u201cBallad\u201d extends beyond the book and has been shown in many formats; it actually includes several hundred images and has expanded over time.\n <\/p>\n ![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/goldin-044-024-cc1.jpg\")
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\n Before the book was published, to experience the \u201cBallad\u201d was fleeting, rare and often, emotionally intense. Goldin originally conceived of it as a slideshow timed to songs by The Velvet Underground and Dionne Warwick, played in nightclubs around New York, and eventually, in the Whitney Biennial in 1985. In this version of the work, the images flash: Friends on the sand at the beach, or splayed together in bed. Their gazes are bright, or disaffected, or longing. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air. Goldin\u2019s best friend Cookie falls in love; she marries; she and her husband die.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt is a work that I love because it occupies a space that is both photographic and time-based, but it also ends up functioning a bit like a piece of immersive cinema or installation art,\u201d explained Katherine A. Bussard, the curator of photography at the Princeton University Art Museum, which recently acquired a version of the slideshow. \u201cThe slideshow originally was really a live performance. So it was the artist standing there, dropping the slides in, DJing the soundtrack\u2026for those who have seen it that way, they talk about the alive feeling of that experience.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The book is its own form of intimacy, and has its own self-guided rhythm, Bussard pointed out. The Table of Contents takes the form of song titles to pair the music, if desired, and (unofficial) Spotify playlists have sprung up to assist.\n <\/p>\n
\n Today, we expect art to be deeply personal to the artist, but Goldin was tapping into something novel as image-making shifted across the 1970s and \u201980s, Bussard said. There was skepticism that \u201cserious art could be made from one\u2019s own lived experience\u201d and that serious photography could be made in color. Styled like snapshots, the \u201cBallad\u201d helped break both molds.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/goldin-076-099-cc1-3.jpg\")
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![\"Nan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/goldin-110-139-cc2.jpg\")
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\n \u201cThere is a way in which the compositions, the subjects, even sometimes the blur of the camera conjures images that we\u2019ve taken, or that our families took of us that that are the repository for our memories,\u201d Bussard said. At the same time, she added, \u201cpeople don\u2019t make family albums about heartbreak. They didn\u2019t pull out the Kodak camera to record moments of despair or longing or upset or death\u2026 so at the same time that the \u2018Ballad\u2019 is leaning into snapshots, it\u2019s also changing them into something more expansive.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Goldin herself has written on the potency of memory and the senses it invokes, calling memory \u201can invocation of the color, smell, sound, and physical presence, the density and flavor of life\u201d in an essay that published in the book.\n <\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s a quote that Bussard has often come back to. \u201cWhen we remember something, we don\u2019t turn it to black and white,\u201d Bussard said. \u201cWe remember things in color, and we remember them often with sound.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four decades ago, 126 of Nan Goldin\u2019s snapshots of love and loss became one of the most influential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-251384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}