Nan Goldin, who plays the "Woman at the Bar Exhibit" looking at the photographs, is herself one of the late twentieth century's most celebrated photographers. She became well-known for documenting the lives of 1970s and '80s New Yorkers, especially those from traditionally underrepresented and underexamined communities. Her seminal photo collection "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" depicts addicts, drag queens, prostitutes, and HIV patients and was an inspiration for the subjects and aesthetic of "The Deuce." In an October 2018 piece in The Observer, Helen Holmes reported that when Goldin's character looks at one of the photos in the exhibit and scoffs, "They call that art? I could have done that!," she is in fact seeing one of her own photos, "Buzz and Nan at the Afterhours, New York City," which was one of the works in the "Ballad" collection. Showrunner David Simon tweeted, "What do you have to do to get the great Nan Goldin to do a big fat meta-cameo on your television drama? You have to study her photographs of 1970s Times Square and inject the raw DNA into your film sets, your wardrobe department, your hair and makeup trailer, your story & themes."
