When photographer Nan Goldin appeared on the art scene in the late 1970s, her tough, autobiographical frankness quickly established her in the all-male field of diaristic photographers. The beaten down and beaten up personages that populate Goldin's work are icons now deeply inscribed in our collective memory. Variety: Photographs by Nan Goldin compiles the still photographs Goldin created for director Bette Gordon's now-infamous 1983 independent film, Variety, and offers a rare glimpse into this artist's symbiotic working process. Hallmarks of Goldin's early work and the influence of filmmaking on Goldin's prolific career are on display in this project. Hovering unsettlingly between fiction and reality, "documentary style" and art photography, Variety: Photographs by Nan Goldin reveals a curious and previously unexamined aspect of Goldin's iconic career, and provides a window into the collision of music, club life, and art production that colored the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This is an important addition to Nan Goldin's oeuvre.

Nan Goldin has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Goldin’s numerous books include Devil’s Playground and The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.

James Crump has written extensively about contemporary art and photography. The author and coauthor of numerous books, Crump directed the film Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe.