The spectator on the image’s meantime of The ballad of sexual dependency

Abstract

By attempting to the intermedial character Nan Goldin’s several works - and specifically of her slide show The ballad of sexual dependency (1979-), this paper intends to indicate the peculiar way in which the artist dialectize images of her personal collection, mobilizing the spectator for an active work in the meantime and intervals of the photographs displayed. The consideration of the intermedial aspects of her work and the return to the Didi Huberman´s concept of dialectical images (1998) allow us to think about the process by which the photographer gives legibility to the pictures of her archive and invokes the spectators to draw their own set of associations and dissociations. We retake, at this point of our argument, to the theme of “spectator’s emancipation” as raised by Jacques Rancière (2008).