Nan Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is the 1980s caught on camera.
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The artist's portraits have the gritty glamour that was era-defining, while her aesthetic influences photography half a century on.
There were only 10 complete prints of the series ever made and the National Gallery of Australia acquired the final one from Goldin's personal collection in late 2021.
On Saturday, it goes on display in Canberra.
"It's going to be a revelation, they really are extraordinary prints that have lasted the test of time," curator Anne O'Hehir told AAP.
"Everyone is trying to take photos like this now, but you can't - there's just one Nan Goldin."
Instagram eat your heart out, Goldin was the real thing.
The photos in her seminal work were taken between 1973 and 1986, and they were first developed as a slide show screened in the clubs and bars of New York.
Goldin wanted to represent her adopted tribe of friends and lovers fully and honestly, through intimate scenes that made the private public, including nudity, sex, drugs and violence.
The ballad is a record of intimate friendship as much as sexual relationships.
Goldin's approach was hugely radical, Ms O'Hehir says, but its meaning has changed as many in her chosen community have since died of HIV/AIDS.
The Ballad can be read as a relic of a lost era, much as the Cibachrome printing process that makes her images so drenched in colour is no more.
One of the best-known images from the series, taken in 1983, is of the artist lying in bed looking at her lover Brian as he turns away from her.
Earlier in the series, he is depicted with James-Dean style cool, but the shocking emotional climax of the series is titled Nan, one month after being battered.
Taken in 1984, it shows the artist with two bruised eyes - the white of one eye is red with blood the same shade as her lipstick.
Goldin has been accused of glamorising drug use and promoting heroin chic, but she has always disavowed this, insisting her photographs are a substitute for memory.
In the 1960s, when Goldin was 11, her older sister died by suicide.
"I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough," Goldin famously said.
"In fact, my pictures show me how much I've lost."
More recently, Goldin has become known as an activist.
After she became addicted to the prescription opioid OxyContin post-surgery, she took on the company Purdue Pharmaceuticals, owned by the billionaire Sackler family.
The Sacklers have poured money into some of the most prestigious art institutions in the world, including those that show Goldin's work.
Through flash mobs and die-ins, she convinced galleries to refuse the Sacklers' money, as documented in Laura Poitras' recent award-winning documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.
The ballad of sexual dependency was purchased as part of the NGA's 40th anniversary celebrations and is on show from Saturday until January 28.
AAP travelled with the assistance of the NGA.
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