Biography provided by Focal press
 
Goldin's vérité-style slide and music diary, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (published as a book in 1986), used 700-800 images and popular songs to spin a constantly evolving tale of abuse, drugs, and sex. Goldin's camera is part of her intimate relationships, recording her subjective internal feeling about what is going on between Goldin and her subjects. Her images are a post-modern morality tale that chronicles the heyday and collapse of a nihilistic lifestyle. Her work embodies the shift in photographic practice from the single flawless black and white print to casually composed collections of color snapshots that emphasize autobiography, sexuality, and outsider culture.
 
(Author: RH)
 
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409] (Used with permission)
 
Approved biography
Courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK)
 
Nan Goldin's book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency was one of the most influential series of photographs of the 1980's. It was originally presented as a slide show accompanied by a rock soundtrack and brought an intimate, even amateur, use of photography into the arena of contemporary art. It is a pictorial journey, documenting, with total candour, Goldin's 'extended family' of Bohemian friends, drug addicts, transvestites, clubbers and battered lovers. The images are particularly powerful because of the photographer's involvement with her subjects over a 20 year period.
 
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is included here with permission.
 
Wikipedia
 
Nancy Goldin (born 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing with the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Her most notable work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. In the slideshow and monograph (1986) Goldin portrayed her chosen "family", meanwhile documenting the post-punk and gay subcultures. She is a founding member of the advocacy group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) against the opioid epidemic. She lives and works in New York City.