It is a loving picture
--accepting.
It is not the tragic picture at all,
even if it is showing a tragic... situation.
That picture put you in front of your conscience.
What am I doing for that problem?
So, that's why people get angry.
On one hand you had this very intimate
situation
and you had a logo that was about selling.
Benetton was a clothing company.
It just seems, so
evident what he was doing.
He was creating sensational iconographic images that people would remember along with the brand Benetton.
"Well, we're not looking at the commercial side of it."
"To us, it was an opportunity
to make people think about AIDS."
The Kirby family said,
"Benetton's not using us -- We're using Benetton."
We want people to know that David was
with us once, and this is what the disease did--it's devastating.
I was living in Athens, Ohio. I was a grad student.
I was interested in-- in AIDS as a project.
So I ended up going to Paternoster house.
It was a hospice home for people living with AIDS.
The woman who started this home felt it was better to
--rather than to hide --
to be open about what-- what she was doing, and why.
So she said, "You can take photos here."
His name was David Kirby.
He went to the hospital in Stafford, Ohio-- was very small town and
they found out that he had AIDS
and they, you know, burned the ambulance.
and there was just a lot of... fear
I met him, and I said, "Hey, I'm gonna be doing this project, can I take your picture?"
He said something that no one has ever said to me before--
He said, "Yes, you can, but not for personal gain."
He had been an activist and he
wanted this to be known, somehow.
The Center for Disease Control says nationwide, AIDS has struck
1641, mostly homosexuals.
644 people have died from the mystery disease.
It was shocking. I mean, but it was building so slowly you kind of didn't...
realize what you were dealing with.
And suddenly... it was like you were going to a funeral every weekend.
[CHANTING] "Open your eyes and see!"
"It's a state of emergency!"
We... had a government that wouldn't say the word AIDS.
Communities of people started to speak for themselves.
One of the things that ACT UP did initially, said, "We're not victims, actually. We're people, with AIDS."
There are social reasons and political reasons why the disease existed.
[ACTIVIST] "We die, they do nothing!"
"We die and they do nothing!"
[FADING] "We die and they do nothing!"
The caregiver said, "David is-- is dying."
Kate Kirby-- she came and she said to me:
"We would all like you to photograph us saying our final goodbyes to David."
He invited me into the room.
They were holding him, giving him a sip of water,
which I don't think he was taking,
and just being with him at that moment.
I had no image in mind-- and I just stood there,
and I didn't move and I just shot a couple frames.
He died...
... and it was over.
Think, like, two days later or something
I pro-processed the film.
I could tell that it was...
was something there.
When it was published
I think--
I think what I what I wanted to communicate, really, was just that
here is what happened to this to this one person and their family.
Mom and pop, y'know? Boom. And it happened to them.
This is how it feels.
I did work for Benetton from 1982 until 2000.
When I started to do Benetton I said, "Let's do an experiment."
"Let's try to see if we can use.."
"communication that's normally used for selling product."
"Let's use communication to say something more."
"Let's take away the brand, and let's take away the product."
My task was to create a campaign out of
meaning and issues that normally advertising,
they don't want to deal with.
I was searching picture for my campaign and I found the referral photo
publishing life.
When I saw the picture, I said, "That's the picture."
Because it looks like Jesus Christ
but [he] is dying of aids.
It's very pictorial
very pictorial-- the sense of painting.
It is a snapshot,
but at the same time is an incredible composition.
The only thing-- [it] was in black and white.
My problem was that.
I want them really to be realistic
and color is realistic, while black and white is not.
When they contacted me, uhm
I didn't know what to do about that.
Benetton said that they were kind of
trying to bring people's attention to this issue.
The Kirby's said, "Let's do it."
The word "provocation"
got a very strange meaning
it is sound like if it is negative to be provocative.
The Pietà Michelangelo-- is that provocative?
A mother within [arms] is dead son?
Every great piece of art has to provoke you something so
you have to provoke interest.
That's what you have to do.
Suddenly, a picture that nobody complain about,
at another time, then suddenly became a shocking picture.
[ACTIVIST] "Boycott Benetton! Benetton Boycott!"
[News Anchor:] "Benetton uses advertising the way bullfighters use capes:"
[News Anchor:] "to draw attention and provoke a reaction."
[PETER F.] "All communication's manipulative. Yes, we are playing on people's emotions"
"just the way hallmark cards and AT&T--"
[Interviewer Interrupts:] "Okay-"
[PETER F.] "-- play off people's emotions."
[Interviewer Interrupts:] "Lemme ask you this--"
[PETER F.] "But at least we're doing it a way that's going to say something positive about a very serious issue."
I didn't see a message of empowerment--
I didn't see any kind of message
coming from that advertising
that would give people a way to become active to
take action in their own world.
I don't think that AIDS activists were more activist than me,
that's the point.
They were not more activist than me.
I had a big company investing money to make AIDS aware in the world.
Huh, what did it do?
Tell your client to do that, my dear friend from advertising.
Tell your client to invest on problem that we should be solving.
[WOMAN] "I basically think"
"that instead of blaming 'Bennettron',"
"gays-- hemophiliacs or whatever--"
"we should blame the United States government"
"for not doing nothing for the last... well,"
"fifteen years!"
At the time, I don't feel like it created dialogue.
I think it was a roadblock.
I think it shut things down because people just couldn't get over the idea that there was this kind of, you know,
autobiography being used as commodity.
[NEWS ANCHOR] "Well, however Benetton intends the ads"
"the company announced today that profits were up nearly twenty four percent last year."
Controversy mean that-that you discuss about that.
It mean that interests you,
that there are different point of view
and there is something going on. It's got an energy.
So, from a economic point of view, I think it sells, yes.
Yeah, it did sell it Benetton, for sure.
[PETER F.] "The fact is if a billion people see this image around the world"
"can you imagine the-- the power that that has"
"to create a collective consciousness in the world"
"that doesn't previous- hasn't"
"previously existed. Just consider"
"an image viewed by a billion people--"
"that image viewed by a billion people."
I hear that it did change people's impressions of Aids, and I hope it did.
At this point. I realize it's become an image
that has stirred up a lot of emotions and has become very significant.
My feelings about that photograph have significantly changed over time.
Now when I look at that photograph I can see the humanist empathy of the maker.
It was about trying to capture a human moment.
With an Italian, "guardare e vedere"
I don't know if you understand-- "To look, and to see."
There are thing will happen that we don't want to see.
David Kirby was a great help to make understanding what AIDS was about.
[FEMALE HOST] "What do you think David would say"
"about all of this?"
"With people, press conferences and..."
"What do you think he'd say?"
[MR. KIRBY] "How he'd put it? I think he'd've said 'go for it.'"
'"Betsy? In your words-- he would've-- uhh'"
"'You just go for it'. That's just David"
[BETSY]: "He's up there goin, 'Wow.'"
"'You go. Yay team!'"