“Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency...is a beggar's opera of recent times. It is a...projection of photographs taken over 13 years, of friends, rednecks, exotic and familiar scuzz scenes, sex (romantic and un-), money traps and escapes, kids, family, death and life. It is accompanied by a brilliantly edited soundtrack of some of the most wildly pungent popular music of the last decades, such as Lotte Lenya's rendition of the title song (from Threepenny Opera), Maria Callas' ‘Casta Diva,'...Charles Aznavour's drag-queen lament...Klaus Nomi's ‘You Don't Own Me'.... Goldin's piece had the miniatured painfulness and humor of a personal scrapbook, and the macho diffidence of street photographers and other poètes engagés. Here were real thieves and unexpected heroes, and a sense that some things in life might still be worth a brawl” (Lisa Liebmann, Artforum). “....a slide piece so terrific...steeped in...issues of image-making and gender identification.... Given the work's matter-of-fact sensationalism, the comparison to Diane Arbus is inevitable. Goldin, however, seems more connected to her subjects; as the same people appear again and again, the show has a narrative subtext that transcends the voyeuristic.... (These) portraits are not simply candid--they're also complicitous.... They're self-parodies with conviction” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). The Ballad of Sexual Dependency was featured at the Whitney Biennial, ‘85.