--- title: AIDS and ACT UP Photographs Capture 'Wildly Sad' Epidemic description: The photographer Stephen Barker followed friends to an ACT UP meeting in late 1988 and ended up creating a body of work about the crisis. canonical: https://time.com/4912312/act-up-stephen-barker-photos/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-09-12T13:00:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T04:26:06.000Z article:section: History og:title: AIDS and ACT UP Photographs Capture 'Wildly Sad' Epidemic og:description: The photographer Stephen Barker followed friends to an ACT UP meeting in late 1988 and ended up creating a body of work about the crisis og:url: https://time.com/4912312/act-up-stephen-barker-photos/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ee2e0167db1190b/6988dac2fb4eac5a0d893692/stephen-barker-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2405 og:image:height: 1353 og:image:alt: Stephen Barker og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: AIDS and ACT UP Photographs Capture 'Wildly Sad' Epidemic twitter:description: The photographer Stephen Barker followed friends to an ACT UP meeting in late 1988 and ended up creating a body of work about the crisis twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ee2e0167db1190b/6988dac2fb4eac5a0d893692/stephen-barker-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Capturing the Wild Sadness of the AIDS Crisis at Its Height > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/) and [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) Updated: Dec 13, 2023 4:26 AM UTCPublished: Sep 12, 2017 1:00 PM UTC  Rod Sorge (1969-1999), ACT UP Needle Exchange and Amador Vega, ACT UP Latino Caucus. Circa 1991. Rod Sorge (1969-1999), ACT UP Needle Exchange and Amador Vega, ACT UP Latino Caucus. Circa 1991. Stephen Barker by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/) and [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) Updated: Dec 13, 2023 4:26 AM UTCPublished: Sep 12, 2017 1:00 PM UTC It was not until decades later — after drug advances and cultural changes had [dulled the sharp edge](http://time.com/4329444/aids-vaccine-new-hiv-target/) of the AIDS crisis, after the disease and those who fought it became something that many people saw as [history](http://time.com/4125655/aids-time-article-1982/) — that the photographer Stephen Barker realized that he had been creating a photo project about AIDS and the people he met at [ACT UP](http://time.com/3926293/larry-kramer-activism-hbo-documentary/), the AIDS advocacy group. Barker had followed some friends to an ACT UP meeting in late 1988 and would end up being involved with the organization for the next several years, especially through his work as what he calls a “foot soldier” for its needle-exchange program. It seemed natural to start photographing his friends and comrades there, accumulating their portraits over time. But he says it was not until this past summer, when he began editing those photographs for a gallery show, that he saw that body of work “pull away” from the rest of his photography and become something separate. “It isn’t a fair representation of everyone in ACT UP. It’s really just a handful of people who were among my friends. But on a spiritual level I think it says something about us,” Barker tells TIME. “There’s a lot of anger, a lot of push and pull and the heat of the moment and confrontations, and it’s terribly important, but there’s something behind all of that. There’s an understanding of the people involved that they are actors in history.” Those photographs will be exhibited at [Daniel Cooney Fine Art](http://www.danielcooneyfineart.com/) in New York City from Sept. 14 through Oct. 28\. Barker has also put together a book, _Funeral March_, of the photos he took documenting an event in which the body of Mark Lowe Fisher was brought in an open coffin to New York City’s Republican National Committee headquarters right before the 1992 presidential election. Fisher had known that death was coming, and he wrote about why his funeral should be a time primarily to speak up, not to mourn. “I have decided that when I die I want my fellow AIDS activists to execute my wishes for my political funeral,” Fisher wrote, in [a statement, “Bury Me Furiously,” available on ACT UP’s website](http://www.actupny.org/diva/polfunsyn.html). “I suspect — I know — my funeral will shock people when it happens. We Americans are terrified of death. Death takes place behind closed doors and is removed from reality, from the living. I want to show the reality of my death, to display my body in public; I want the public to bear witness. We are not just spiraling statistics; we are people who have lives, who have purpose, who have lovers, friends and families. And we are dying of a disease maintained by a degree of criminal neglect so enormous that it amounts to genocide.” Fisher’s funeral was one of [a series of events](https://www.vice.com/en%5Fus/article/vdqv34/why-the-ashes-of-aids-victims-on-the-white-house-lawn-matter) that ACT UP organized in that period in order to force the American public, particularly [politicians](http://time.com/4256333/hillary-clinton-nancy-reagan-aids/), to confront the literal life-and-death nature of the issue.  From the ACT UP funeral march carrying the body of Mark L. Fisher from Judson Memorial Church up Sixth Avenue to the Republican National Committee headquarters on the eve of the presidential election, 1992. Stephen Barker “It was amazing how much it took to rise above the mainstream din to be recognized. It required intense creativity and outlandish demonstrations,” Barker says. “It was wildly sad — to be so public, so confrontational, about your grief, to mix it up with anger and frustration. The whole thing was so naked.”  From the ACT UP funeral march carrying the body of Mark L. Fisher from Judson Memorial Church up Sixth Avenue to the Republican National Committee headquarters on the eve of the presidential election, 1992. Stephen Barker For the photographer, the physical difficulty of the act of the funeral march (“A body isn’t light,” he points out) combined with the physical reality of the moment, a rainy dusk, created a “tug of war” between his presence at such an emotional event and his feeling at the time that he was not adequately capturing it. Working with an unfamiliar camera, as the light faded, he says that he could hear the automatic exposure times lengthening, and knew the pictures would be blurry. In the moment, he felt “beyond caring” about the idea that the images might not be good. It wasn’t until later that he came to see their streakiness as a success.  From the ACT UP funeral march carrying the body of Mark L. Fisher from Judson Memorial Church up Sixth Avenue to the Republican National Committee headquarters on the eve of the presidential election, 1992. Stephen Barker The passing years, then, have changed Barker’s own relationship with the photographs. When he looks at them now, he says, it’s almost as if assessing work created by somebody else. But, at the same time, that moment around the turn of the 1990s feels newly fresh. In today’s political climate, he says he senses once again the same feeling that created ACT UP and such dramatic demonstrations as the funeral march. “The situation then is really parallel to the situation now in several broad ways — the tension I think most of us wake up with every day, about _O_ _h my god, what happens now,_” Barker says. “\[That situation\] was true back then, except it was even more underscored because your life and the life of your friends was at risk. That constant pressure just needs somewhere to go”  Rod Sorge (1969-1999), ACT UP Needle Exchange and Amador Vega, ACT UP Latino Caucus. Circa 1991. Stephen Barker  Jon Greenberg (1956-1993), Alternative and Holistic Treatment Committee, 2/16/1992. Stephen Barker  Marlene McCarty, Gran Fury, 8/1994. Stephen Barker  Simon Watney, Terrence Higgins Trust's Health Education Group; Outrage; writer, art historian. 10/31/1991. Stephen Barker  Ryan Landry, ACT UP member, 4/29/1991. Stephen Barker  Richard Elovich, ACT UP Needle Exchange, Gran Fury, 1/19/1992. Stephen Barker  Mike Iveson, ACT UP member, 3/2/1991. Stephen Barker  Porchlight (Jay Funk and Mark Harrington), Saugerties, NY. 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