"In November, 1990, LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man, David Kirby -- his body wasted by AIDS, his gaze locked on something beyond this world -- surrounded by anguished family members as he took his last breaths. The haunting image of Kirby's passing (above), taken by a journalism grad student named Therese Frare, became the one photograph most identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that, by then, had seen as many as 12 million people infected. Now, 20 years after her photograph helped transform public perception of the disease, LIFE spoke with Frare about that picture; the international controversy it sparked when United Colors of Benetton used it in a 1992 ad; and the never-before-published photographs she took before and after David Kirby's death -- photos that reveal the untold story behind one of the 20th century's most heart-breaking, indelible images."Read more about how it became an ad, etc. in the FPP article.
"You know, at the time the Benetton ad was running, and the controversy over their use of my picture of David was really raging, I was falling apart," Frare now admits. "I was falling to pieces. But Bill Kirby told me something I never forgot. He said, 'Listen, Therese. Benetton didn't use us, or exploit us. We used them. Because of them, your photo was seen all over the world, and that's exactly what David wanted.' And I just held on to that."It wasn't photojournalism, it was an advertisement. Casting it as an image that made a difference in ways more important than Benetton revenues is revisionist history.
"'I started grad school at Ohio University in Athens in January, 1990,' recalls Frare, now a professional photographer in Seattle. 'Right away, I began volunteering at the Pater Noster House, an AIDS hospice in Columbus, maybe 50 miles from Athens. In March, I started taking photos there for a school project, and got to know the staff and amazing people like Peta, who was volunteering and caring for David. ... Kirby passed away in April, 1990, at the age of 32, not long after Frare began shooting at the hospice. She spent much more time, it turns out, with Peta, who himself was HIV-positive while caring for David. Frare photographed Peta over the course of two years, until he, too, died of AIDS, in the fall of 1992."posted by ericb at 7:00 AM on July 23, 2010
"'My son more or less starved to death at the end,' says Kirby, describing a terrible symptom of the disease. 'We just felt it was time that people saw the truth about AIDS', Kay Kirby remembers, 'and if Benetton could help, then fine. That ad was the last chance for people to see David -- a marker to show that he was once here, among us.'"posted by ericb at 7:02 AM on July 23, 2010 [1 favorite]
'Tibor didn’t think of himself as a designer. He really was an editor and a journalist who believed that he had a moral obligation and a political desire to expose issues and make them as sexy as possible so an audience - - primarily kids, but really everybody - - would look at them. He understood that because people have short attention spans, they have to be engaged quickly.posted by ericb at 7:14 AM on July 23, 2010 [3 favorites]
Advertising is a powerful tool for selling ideas. Tibor didn’t think it was a crime for companies that really cared about what they were espousing socially to also make money. So within this context, he considered advertising that would focus on AIDS awareness as beneficial and worthy.
Tibor, working with Oliviero Toscani, had helped create campaigns for Benetton and was the editor of Benetton’s Colors magazine. In November, 1990, while reading Life, Tibor ran across a black-and-white documentary photo. It showed an Ohio family around the bed of David Kirby, a 32-year-old man dying of AIDS. Tibor and Benetton approached the Kirby family and the photographer, Therese Frare. Benetton contributed generously to an AIDS foundation, with the family’s consent. The family approved of the use of the image and came to New York for a press conference. There was a collaborative feeling among all involved that you had to really punch people in the face with this incredibly epic and devastating moment and make them aware of it. You would stop and look at it. You would have a conversation about it, whether you hated it or loved it. It would promote heated dialogue. Tibor and his team spent a long time agonizing over colorizing the image, which they did, to take it out of the journalistic field and make it appear more as an ad, so that it was even more shocking in its context and would hopefully be more arresting. For a while, the photo and the ad became a central focus of the AIDS debate.
In June of 1994, Tibor conceived and helped create an image of Ronald Reagan for Colors - - showing Reagan’s face, manipulated electronically, as if he had contracted AIDS. Reagan was villainous in Tibor’s eyes for having done virtually nothing during his administration to address the concerns of people with AIDS. To make the leap and visually give Reagan AIDS was so shocking and so courageous. The text that accompanied the photograph was a fake obituary that spoke to how Reagan was a national hero because he not only admitted that he had AIDS but he had diverted funds from the defense department to fight it. It said that we mourned the loss of a courageous leader who had done all the right things from the very beginning when AIDS was first becoming an epidemic. It was photography as political parody.
Tibor believed in the photograph as the universal communicator, for AIDS and for many subjects of significance. As such, issue thirteen of Colors, which came out in December of 1995, had no words at all. The exploration of visual expression led him to ask, in the spirit of Edward Steichen’s "The Family of Man" exhibition or Charles and Ray Eames’s Powers of Ten: How can we have the most eloquent, resonant dialogue with no words at all? You’re telling a story, preferably with humor, and everybody from a 10-year-old child to a 90-year-old, in any culture, could get it.'
The company is known for sponsorship of a number of sports, and for the provocative and original "United Colors" publicity campaign. The latter originated when photographer Oliviero Toscani was given carte blanche by the Benetton management. Under Toscani's direction, ads were created that contained striking images unrelated to any actual products being sold by the company.posted by ericb at 8:02 AM on July 23, 2010 [1 favorite]
These graphic, billboard-sized ads included depictions of a variety of shocking subjects, one of which featured a deathbed scene of a man (AIDS activist David Kirby) dying from AIDS. Others included a bloodied, unwashed newborn baby with umbilical cord still attached (which was highly controversial), two horses mating, close-up pictures of tattoos reading 'HIV Positive' on the bodies of men and women, a collage consisting of genitals of persons of various races, a priest and nun about to engage in a romantic kiss, pictures of inmates on death row, and a picture of a bloodied t-shirt and pants ridden with bullet holes from a soldier killed in the Bosnian War. The company's logo served as the only text accompanying the images in most of these advertisements."
Mom & Dad, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that 'I'm gay.' The bad news: 'I've got AIDS.'Floored his family, but they quickly came around accepting him, us and being tremendous caretakers. And I saw this repeated many times with other friends' families. It's unfortunate that it sometimes takes a 'shock' to bring people around to being truly loving and accepting. In many ways I viewed this photograph and advertisement back then as serving a similar function, particularly in a time when there was so much 'silence' and negative stigma about the disease and those suffering from it. That's also why the AIDS protest art was so effective in 'being in your face' and the international impact of ACT-UP forced people to confont the plague.
"You know, at the time the Benetton ad was running, and the controversy over their use of my picture of David was really raging, I was falling apart," Frare now admits. "I was falling to pieces. But Bill Kirby told me something I never forgot. He said, 'Listen, Therese. Benetton didn't use us, or exploit us. We used them. Because of them, your photo was seen all over the world, and that's exactly what David wanted.' And I just held on to that."posted by togdon at 8:52 AM on July 23, 2010 [1 favorite]
People should be more outraged that it took Magic Johnson getting HIV to really take the topic out of the taboo and into the mainstream
Rock Hudson -- 1985posted by ericb at 2:12 PM on July 23, 2010
Ryan White -- 1985
Randy, Robert & Ricky Ray -- 1986
Magic Johnson -- 1991
Greg Louganis -- 1995
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