Goldin's family album is as radical as ever

Diaries are irresistible to the nosy, an artist's one even more so. They are portals into another person's life in another time.

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Nan Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a photographic diary that is still as fresh, exciting, comforting and confronting as it was when it was published in 1986.

For the first time in the UK comes this opportunity to see all 126 images, pristinely printed and framed on display in a gallery.

In its protean form, Ballad was 700-ish photographs (the curation changed each time) shown in chaotic slide show format in New York gay bars and nightclubs to a soundtrack of songs from The Velvet Underground to Nina Simone.

Goldin was a teenage runaway who fled the stifling suburb of Swampscott after her beloved older sister Barbara died by suicide. She fell into the Boston drag scene before moving to New York. The slide shows were originally conceived to amuse the same circle of friends she was documenting. She'd began photographing their exploits when she discovered drinking (and then heroin) and wanted a record.

Shimmering, bruising moments

Named after a song from Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera, Ballad is a glamorous, engrossing and gross (in a good way) family album. Hyper-saturated images shot on Kodachrome document the house parties, hangovers and humping on beds with garish patterned linen.