Nicholas Nixon began photographing people living with AIDS
in the greater Boston area in 1987, when there was a great deal of prejudice, fear,
and misunderstanding surrounding HIV/AIDS. Through his revealing, sensitive portraits,
Nixon sought to encourage empathy and compassion. When this series was first shown
at MoMA in 1988, protesters distributed fliers to museum visitors, reminding
them that each of Nixon’s subjects was “a human being whose health has
deteriorated not simply due to a virus, but due to government inaction, the
inaccessibility of affordable health care, and institutionalized neglect in the
forms of heterosexism, racism, and sexism.”