ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a discussion of Nan Goldin's The Ballad by way of introducing the idea that photography is a form of world making. It focuses on the nature of photography, its production and interpretation. A photograph shares several characteristics with other visual images, and yet the photograph is a visual image quite unlike others. While every photograph promises to present the thing photographed as it appeared to the photographer at the time of capture, photographs nonetheless always seem to contain a level of inventiveness. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a collection of more than 700 photographs made by the artist over a fifteen-year period. As an image-making and representational practice, photography has appealed to educational researchers for many years. Photographs, by their very nature are objects to be read, and they need to be read to be operative.
