The photographs show a transition through Goldin's travels and her life. Most of her "Ballad" subjects were dead by the 1990s, lost either to drug overdose or AIDS; this tally included close friends and often-photographed subjects Greer Lankton and Cookie Mueller. In 2003, "The New York Times" nodded to the work's impact, explaining Goldin had "forged a genre, with photography as influential as any in the last twenty years." In addition to "Ballad," she combined her Bowery pictures in two other series: "I'll Be Your Mirror" (from a song by The Velvet Underground) and "All By Myself."