Nan Goldin is one of the foremost depictors of life as it is lived on a personal level today’s. She has opened our eyes to the way the camera can be used to preserve and portray the most intimate moments and situations, and to depict people’s personal lives in both their lighter and more somber moments. Goldin has, in a very personal way, documented her relationships with her close friends – her “extended family” – throughout their various phases and events in life so as not to lose hold of them. With the camera as her “diary” she has created authentic documentation of her own and her friends’ lives. It is obvious that the people in her relationships are her main concern.

Nan Goldin began photographing at the age of 15. Her first exhibition of black and white photographs took place in the early 1970s. She received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, Boston, in 1977. She moved to New York in 1978 where she continued to document her extended family.

Few public débuts in the art world have been as remarkable and remain as memorable as Nan Goldin's. In the mid 1980's, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" was first presented as a slide show only for those involved, the artist’s extended family. Later, with a soundtrack and a more structured arrangement, it was shown in New York clubs, in Europe to begin with at film festivals and finally – with the simultaneous appearance of the book – at galleries and in art spaces in the form of exhibitions.

Nan Goldin is an outstanding contemporary photographer, and her work has shaped several generations of photographers, making her one of the most influential artists of our times. Her opus magnum, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" has added significant new facets to the debate about documentary truthfulness in photography. In her work, moments of the greatest intimacy – desire, pain, death, and violence – are exposed to the gaze of the viewer, and thus to the public – with relentless candor. The touching simplicity of her use of photography: Taking pictures to remember, as protection against the loss of the loved ones, as self-representation, as proof of the group's, the family's, belonging together, gives each picture its own intimate truth and historical position in a story, written and continuing to be told by the photographer.

Her multimedia installation "Sœurs, Saintes et Sibylles" first shownat the Festival d'automne in Paris in 2004 is shown there as a DVD projection. This piece pays homage to her sister Barbara, whose rebellion and suicide have so deeply marked her own life and work.