The photo that changed the face of AIDS

[n2doc]

In November 1990 LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man named 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 on his death bed, taken by a journalism student named Therese Frare, quickly became the one photograph most powerfully identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that, by then, had seen millions of people infected (many of them unknowingly) around the globe.

More than two decades later, on the 25th World AIDS Day, LIFE.com shares the deeply moving story behind that picture, along with Frare’s own memories of those harrowing, transformative years.

“I started grad school at Ohio University in Athens in January 1990,” Frare told LIFE.com. “Right away, I began volunteering at the Pater Noster House, an AIDS hospice in Columbus. In March I started taking photos there and got to know the staff — and one volunteer, in particular, named Peta — who were caring for David and the other patients.”

David Kirby was born and raised in a small town in Ohio. A gay activist in the 1980s, he learned in the late Eighties — while he was living in California and estranged from his family — that he had contracted HIV. He got in touch with his parents and asked if he could come home; he wanted, he said, to die with his family around him. The Kirbys welcomed their son back.



Read more: World AIDS Day: The 1990 Photo That Changed the Face of the Epidemic | LIFE.com http://life.time.com/history/world-aids-day-the-1990-photo-that-changed-the-face-of-the-epidemic/


Tomorrow is World AIDS Day.

[NYC_SKP]

1. I lived that picture. Three years earlier.

And I have to say that the handful of people who have called me homophobic on this board, included me among a bullshit list of "rogue mods", and etc., can flip off.

Most of them have been banned.

RIP best friend forever Brad P, victim of ARCS (as it was known at the time). The symptoms of the disease are well depicted in the image in this post.

K/R

And love to all the millions who, like me, have lost loved ones.

[Tab]

16. Thank you, and one question

Sorry for all you've gone through, but I have to ask - what is ARCS? I don't seem to find a definition anywhere.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

18. I wonder if the poster meant this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS-related_complex

[NYC_SKP]

21. Aids Related Complex was the correct phrase, I think.

alternatively called ARC and ARS, for complex and syndrome, respectively.

Brad would call me and, characteristically for him, would downplay it, saying, "Oh, it's just ARC... or ARCs.."

Thanks again for the post...

[pinto]

2. I met many families in those days who, like the Kirbys, worked to "pass on the care" as they could.

Kay Kirby told LIFE.com that she “made up my mind when David was dying and Peta was helping to care for him, that when Peta’s time came — and we all knew it would come — that we would care for him. There was never any question. We were going to take care of Peta. That was that.

So many singular, personal acts of support and care came forward. Unconditional and real. Day to day stuff. Love made a housecall, in more ways than one.

Thanks for the post.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. Every male friend I had growing up was murdered by these fucking assholes, every one.

This will never be forgotten nor forgiven. It was not a mistake, there is no protection or escape in pleading ignorance. You all know who you are and what you did.

[Jesus Malverde]

9. ^^^This^^^

We'll obviously never be the same and it's unforgivable.

[Egalitarian Thug]

12. It is whatever the sexual equivalent of genocide is and we are going to pretend

it "just happened". I can't even talk about this...

Thank you.

[Ace Acme]

14. It was political genocide

It put a wall between the revolutionary generation of the 1960s/1970s and the young of the 1980s.

Everything we fought and sacrificed for was dismissed as "the gay parade". We were marginalized.
And then when gay equality became mainstream, it was as if our revolution had never existed.
Very shrewd social scripting.

[NuclearDem]

13. [phone]

And for good measure, fuck that coward Reagan for standing by and letting it spiral nearly out of control to appease the Immoral Majority.

[Moonwalk]

30. Fuck him isn't enough. He wasn't a coward. He was Hitler. Whether his idea or no--

...he was the leader of the U.S. at the time, the "decider," and every American was his to protect and serve. It was his job to do something about this crisis when it happened. To make informed decisions and lead the way. He did not—and he did not willfully, sometimes I think even happily. As with women's rights, he threw out a token gesture ("look! woman on supreme court&quot —"look! War on drugs!" to distract people from his inaction. It didn't distract those of us alive at that time, watching this unfold.

He didn't want to do anything. And he didn't.

If he'd opened death camps he couldn't have been more a cause of this genocide.

Let us never forgive, and never forget. Not him, and not the party that put him in power and supported his actions through that decade.

[Moonwalk]

31. +583, 298: the number who have died since the epidemic appeared in the U.S.--

You speak for a lot of us who then and now thought the same and will never be able to forgive this country for how it handled AIDs in that first decade. There are the times that try our souls, and in this test, the U.S. was no better than those in Europe who saw their own people taken away on trains, yet said nothing, did nothing.

This was murder. The U.S. version Hitler's pink triangle. As unforgivable as any other atrocity we've committed here or in foreign lands.

[shenmue]

4. Rest in peace

Memory eternal.

[demigoddess]

5. What stayed with me,

was the gay men who stepped forward and took babies with AIDS home with them when they had no parents. Took care of them and loved them, when most straight people would not.

[Are_grits_groceries]

6. I lived near DC and lost too many friends.

It will always haunt me.

[MuseRider]

7. Without the facial hair Mr. Kirby looks almost

exactly like my brother at the time of his death. I have, of course, over the years seen this picture but the resemblance just now took my breath away.

Thank you for the reminder of World Aids Day. In just a few short weeks I will mark 11 years without my wonderful brother. The world has lost so so many wonderful brothers.

Off to read the story. This photo just shook me, needed to write something first.

[oberliner]

8. 'Dramatic' drop in global HIV infections

The number of HIV infections and Aids-related deaths has fallen dramatically, according to a UN report.

Death rates fell from 2.3 million during its peak in 2005 to 1.6 million last year, says UNAIDS.

The number of new HIV infections fell by a third since 2001 to 2.3 million.

Among children, the drop was even steeper. In 2001 there were more than half a million new infections. By 2012 the figure had halved to just over a quarter of a million.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24208972

A little good news, at least.

[shenmue]

15. Yes

Glad to hear that. Needs to get even better.

[William769]

10. Kick & recommended.

[NuclearDem]

11. One of my sister's friends from college recently contracted HIV

He doesn't know exactly who he got it from, but it was likely someone who never got tested.

But he got tested at the university's student clinic and the staff there has gone out of their way to get him access to ARVs and medical care.

That was a year ago. The ARVs are working, and he's leading a healthy life.

But he would be dead now were it not for David Kirby and activists like ACT UP.

[SoapBox]

17. Never forget...

[hrmjustin]

19. No words.

[nolabear]

20. So many sweet souls. So many.

[mountain grammy]

22. The Reagan years, when we watched our friends die.

Don't ever forget what Reagan did about the AIDS epidemic; NOTHING!

Rot in hell, Ronnie!

[niyad]

28. that is one of the many, many reasons I loathed, and will always loathe, "saint ronnie", the

murdering thug.

[blaze]

23. The love and compassion of the Kirby family

is striking.

I remember, years ago, that ppl who had lost loved ones to aids would change their porch light to a blue light. I used to see them all over capitol hill in Denver.

[idwiyo]

24. k&r

[grilled onions]

25. So Many Died Alone...

agony of the physical as well as the mental knowing so many banished them--felt they "asked" for it. Yet these same hateful creeps had no answer when babes also contracted it. While we lost so many of societies best hopefully we have learned from this.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

26. K&R

[Rhythm]

27. Remembering today, and every damned day...

The ~brothers~ i lost in those dark years...

Lynn & Tim -- my best high-school friends, who died within 6 months of each other.
Dale & Bill -- Dale took care of Bill (who got sick first), but then Dale died 3 months before Bill.
Jeffery - age 2 when he died... he'd been adopted by a lesbian couple who were friends of mine through the MCC church in Charlotte.

I'm sure there were others that i lost-touch with before their health completely deteriorated.

NONE of you are forgotten... not even for a moment.

[liberalhistorian]

29. I'm from Ohio, although I no longer live there,

and I vividly remember when this picture first came out, as well as the horrendous attitudes toward AIDS and any unfortunate soul suffering from it. While we lived in the NE, my mother was from the Columbus area, and much of her family was (and is) still there. While we only knew a few people with AIDS or who had family members with it, the hateful, nasty, mean-spirited, cruel, downright inhuman attitudes we commonly encountered regarding it were beyond dispiriting. There was actually a common attitude of shame that this picture occured in Ohio. It was common to encounter medical workers, including doctors, who were very negative about, and hostile toward, AIDS patients, and who wanted nothing to do with them and resented having to deal with them, as well as counselors and other professionals who felt the same. My parents were teachers, one of them in an area where AIDS was far more common, and they were often running interference against such attitudes and dealing with people who didn't understand why they even dealt with "those people".

Fortunately, times and attitudes have really changed and, for the most part, it's not like that anymore. Of course, there are still areas where that's not true, but they're getting fewer and farther between and more and more becoming the backwards oddity and not the norm. But I'll never forget the sheer cruelty of such attitudes, and having to leave a couple of churches even, because of them. The courage of the activists who daily encountered and stood up to such attitudes and hate against them is nothing short of incredible and amazing to me.

[TBF]

32. In the 1990s I helped on the legal end -

I was a legal assistant and wrote a bunch of appeals for folks who were trying to get Social Security coverage (through the Whitman Walker clinic in Wash DC). I would have to take my own paper to the SSA to copy the files, write the appeal, have it signed off by an attorney, and then file it. We had a pretty good success rate - I worked at a large law firm that did these as a community service.

I will never forget talking to the patients. The worst thing was not the economic angle usually, but the fact that families would keep their partners out of the hospital and funeral. It was heart breaking.