Heartbeat is a compilation of portraits of ‘couples and lovers’, with photographer Nan Goldin capturing four pairs during moments of intimacy and presenting the work in a slide show of 245 images. The English composer John Tavener composed a Kyrie eleison especially for Heartbeat, which is performed by the Icelandic singer Björk. The combination of the images and the music result in an intense ode to love. At the end of the Sixties, Goldin started working on a collection of all-revealing atmospheric images of close friends and acquaintances from her immediate surroundings. She focuses on nightlife; extravagantly dressed men and women; gays, transvestites and transsexuals; drug addicts; and AIDS patients. Goldin photographs her subjects in the most intimate situations: on the toilet, in the bath, drunk, masturbating, having sexual intercourse, crying, and on their deathbeds. There is no posing, and nothing is staged; everything comes directly from the moment itself.