Gagosian gallery in London will present the first-ever UK exhibition of Nan Goldin's complete series 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency' (126 prints, 1973-1986) at its Davies Street location from January 13 to March 21, 2025. Simultaneously, the gallery's Grosvenor Hill space will host 'Richard Avedon: Facing West,' featuring 21 portraits from Avedon's 'In the American West' series, including several unseen since 1985. Both exhibitions mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of the two landmark photography books.
These concurrent shows offer a rare opportunity to compare two radically different but complementary photographic visions of 1980s America—Goldin's intimate, color-saturated chronicle of her downtown New York circle and Avedon's stark black-and-white portraits of working-class Westerners. Together they undermine the glossy, triumphalist narrative of the Reagan era, revealing a nation grappling with vulnerability, addiction, labor, and the AIDS crisis. The exhibitions matter because they reaffirm the enduring power of documentary photography to challenge official self-portraits and speak across generations.