Goldin charts the loss of innocence through barrooms and parties on the social periphery of New York's East Village and through the harrowing worlds of drugs and prostitution. "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a visual diary chronicling the struggle for intimacy and understanding between friends, and lovers--collectively described by Nan Goldin as her "tribe." Her work describes a world that is visceral, charged, and seething with life . As Goldin writes: "Real memory, which these pictures trigger, is an invocation of the color, smell, sound, and physical presence, the density and flavor of life.".