My parents kissing on their Bed, Salem, Massachussetts (2004)

Beginning in the 1970s, the renowned American photographer Nan Goldin has used her camera to obsessively chronicle her life, creating a body of diaristic work that became known as the Ballad of Sexual Dependency.  The tender work My parents kissing on their Bed, Salem, Massachussetts (2004), reveals the continuation of the artist's autofictional approach to art making, in which her intimate work is inseparable from her life story. An artist who endured a turbulent youth, against the backdrop of personal losses, the AIDS crisis and being a part of the dynamic New York subculture scene, Goldin's camera acts as a means to take back control amid the uncertainties of life. "The camera is as much a part of my everyday life as talking or eating or sex" she once said. 

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