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.”