Nixon, People With AIDS

In 1986, Nicholas Nixon and his wife, Bebe, began the People With AIDS project in 1986. They intended to show honestly and compassionately what it is like to have AIDS, and how the disease affects family and friends of those afflicted. They wished to demonstrate why AIDS is "the most devastating social and medical issue of our time."



The most famous photographs in this series are those of Thomas Moran (above), though fourteen other individuals suffering from AIDS were also photographed.



When it was first shown in 1988, the series of work was seen as "one of the first and most controversial mainstream art exhibits on AIDS, becoming a kind of standard by which to measure dehumanizing, degrading representations of the disease." Several rights groups vehemently protested the photographs, stating that it only showed the negative side of AIDS, that it only showed death and despair. These groups wanted more diverse and more positive representations of people with the disease.

Today, however, this series is seen as historically important; they are described as a stark contrast to the abundance of images of happy and healthy people with AIDS. Perhaps they're a warning of the pain caused by the disease, or perhaps they were simply a documentation of a few people's lives.