Page 17 - Faces of AIDS: 102 Portraits

speaks to me, in the bottomless With the publication of Faces of AIDS,
sadness in his eyes, of the grief and nearly four decades after the first
loss that all of us who lived through the days of the epidemic, Jim’s portraits
Plague Years know too well. of the earliest faces of the AIDS

Generation do indeed come to life
But perhaps the most powerful of these again to remind us of the incalculable
images—and certainly the most painful loss and unspeakable grief we have
for me to look at—is the haunting endured. Among the names of the
photo of disco superstar Sylvester. I people involved in this publication, you
cannot claim to have known Sylvester might recognize some real warhorses,
intimately, but we were acquainted well veterans of many LGBTQ fights and
enough to speak when we ran into each survivors of the Plague Years. Like Jim,
other on Castro Street. And one of my we believe that it is time to rediscover

earliest and fondest memories of San the lost faces of AIDS.
Francisco is of Sylvester commanding
the stage at the Castro Street Fair, —Hank Trout, M.A.
holding thousands of us in the palm of Editor-At-Large,
his hands, lifting us to the heights of A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine
disco frenzy, wringing us dry as few
performers could. No one who ever felt
the warmth of Sylvester’s broad, sparkly
smile will ever forget it. It is difficult for
me, and painful, to try to reconcile this
sad, somber photo of Sylvester—the

last portrait he ever posed for—with
the exuberant, wildly creative, gifted,
inspiring disco queen who dominated
every stage he graced right up to the
end of his days. This photo, even more
than the others in this series, reminds
me of the inexpressible losses we all
suffered because of the epidemic.

“Loss” seems to permeate not only
each of these portraits themselves
but their history as well. Although he
has no idea where the original prints
are now, and cannot find anyone who
does know, Jim has hoped that these
portraits would find life again.