Page 14 - Faces of AIDS: 102 Portraits

interested in what it was like emotionally
and existentially when a plague began
to sweep across the community.”

Do not be surprised to find friends and
lovers in this gallery of specific faces
who represent so many others who
passed unpictured. As a gay man, I
lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles,
and New York from 1976 to 1982,
essentially the gestation years of the
epidemic. Through Jim’s lens, I see
men I knew casually from sobriety;

men I dated; men I had fantastic and
horrible sex with; my good friend from
art school, Clark Henley, author of
The Butch Manual; and, of course,
Sylvester, the “Queen of Disco,” whom
I did not know personally, but whose
defiant voice and vivacity helped keep
our spirits up when we all began to live
with AIDS as a daily reality.

—Christopher Harrity, Interactive

Art Director, Here Publishing: The
Advocate, Out, and HIV PLUS
magazines