Page 13 - Faces of AIDS: 102 Portraits

APPRECIATION

Christopher Harrity

I have been friends with photographer Angeles. Everything in our lives was
Jim Wigler for thirty-five years. We met dramatically affected by AIDS: our
when I was working as an art director lovers and friends, the way we made
in adult gay publishing in 1982, and a living, and our ongoing sober lives.
he was a very busy photographer We still had to show up every day,
in San Francisco shooting for many going to work, going to meetings, all the
magazines, most notably as staff while monitoring our weight, looking for
photographer for Drummer magazine. lesions, and feeling our lymph nodes.

My own father introduced me to Jim We began attending an increasing roll
as a member of our mutual gay sober call of dear friends’ homes, hospitals,
community. and memorials.

Jim looked like a slightly dizzy version While many of us, me included, tried to
of Marcel Proust, with huge black eyes bury our heads against the panic, Jim
and the requisite mustache of the times. had the presence of mind to use his
He knew everybody in town and was many connections around the Bay Area
disarmingly flamboyant and slightly to begin photographing people with

wicked. We struck up a fast friendship AIDS. His head-shot portraits pictured
based on mutual need: me, for the sexy a hundred people infected with HIV
fetish photography he created to put in during the viral emergency of the mid-
the magazines I art-directed; him, for 1980s.
a connection to get his work published
more widely. All the while this happy Faces of AIDS opened in a pavilion
symbiotic relationship blossomed, our at the 1986 San Mateo County Fair,
world was collapsing around us. returning to San Francisco for exhibits
at Grace Cathedral and the Moscone
Friends were suddenly sick, finding odd Center. Soon enough Faces of AIDS
purple spots on their skin, losing weight, was touring nationally with the Names

and finally disappearing. In August of Project Quilt. Because somewhere
1982, a few months after Jim and I met, on the road, Jim’s beautiful original
the Center for Disease Control coined prints disappeared in the confusion
the acronym AIDS. of the times, he has scanned his
archived negatives to create this book
Jim and I have lived through, hopefully, while preparing new digital prints for
the worst of it now. Back then, he was museums, galleries, and collectors. “My
in San Francisco and I was in Los hope,” Jim says, “is that people will be