W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #aids, #photographers+friendsunitedagainstaids, #scottthode, #stevehart, #peterhhalpert, #kathyryan, #theindomitablespirit, #inadream

It seems almost perverse to report that AIDS changed my life in a positive way.  In 1989 a not-for-profit organization — Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS was being organized, and I raised some money for the cause by calling up some collectors and dealers and demanding either $500 or $1000 depending on what I thought they could reasonably afford.  I told them if they gave me the money, that would be the end of it.  I raised several thousand dollars and felt like I had been a good boy.  

There was going to be an auction at Sothebys — a first of many many charity auctions to follow — as well as a portfolio with every hot photographer then working included.  The auction and portfolio were called “The Indomitable Spirit” which was hard to remember and say but a noble sentiment.   

No one imagined that AIDS would prove to be a world wide scourge. 

It was great to see the photography community engaged meaningfully.  I made my effort and then went to the woods to be in show business.

The founder of P+FUAA (doesn’t that just trip off the tongue) was a photo agent named Joe Hartney, and he had lined up a lot of talent to work with him.  The sense was “lets raise this money, get a cure and move on.”  Well that didn’t happen.  

The auction and portfolio raised a lot of money — almost two million dollars — for education and research.  I wasn’t paying much attention but after about eighteen months I started to get inscrutable oblique messages about Mr. Hartney was sick and worse, dying.  Ultimately I got asked to take his place as chairman and that was life changing. 

When I worked on the text for my book “The Unseen Eye” (2011), I regretted missing the chance to talk specifically about the many great people in my life in photography.  I hope some. of that has been remedied in these pages..  

I also want to emphasize the significance, in the 1990s, of Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS.  Joe Hartney, was dying, and after some unexpected bends in the road, I went from volunteer to chairman.  That organization helped define who I am. It completely changed my life. I found the whole experience exhilarating, despite the truly unfortunate circumstances of how I inherited the chairmanship. I had a mission and I became a totally different, fearless guy. I’m like Pollyanna. I adore my life in photography. The photography community -- photographers, artists, commercial, editorial — is full of great people, with the number of bozos and jerks such a small percentage.

The mission of Photographers + Friends was to raise money to distribute for AIDS education and for medical care. Its methodology, at first, was to launch the exhibition, ‘The Indomitable Spirit’ that Marvin Heiferman curated in 1990, and to sell those pictures. It was the product of the labors of Marvin, Andy Grunberg, Brent Sikkema and their team. In the process of doing that, it developed two unbelievably prescient portfolios of the hottest fine-art photographic talent in the world. The combination of those two projects raised a couple of million dollars.

What the organization did was set a standard for the use of fine-art photography in helping to fund charitable causes. It helped foster and shape The Charity Auction. In retrospect, not to discount the booming economy of the 90s, it was also the first to validate the sustained value of contemporary photography collecting. It brought together the worlds of fashion, fine-art photography, photojournalism and the tastemakers of photography collecting as they hadn’t been aligned before.

Photographers + Friends died in the mid-1990s, a victim of its own success. It got folded into DIFFA. I don’t know who actually turned out the lights. 

It was a great deal of work that I came to love. I thought I was bringing no skill set to it beyond some charm and commitment.  Further I had no sense of outrage and, in fact, felt I knew very little about anything.

There were some photographers who did bring rage and fierceness to their work. 

This may is an inappropriate story that has fallen between the cracks; nonetheless … .  It struck me that all the AIDS photo essays all began after someone had been diagnosed.  I had the completely fucked up notion of putting myself in the center of such a story.  I had never been tested for HIV and felt like a fraud championing the need for AIDS education.

I had met a young photographers named Steve Hart who had done a heart breaking story about the family of a young positive mother named Sensa; he had received the ICP Infinity Award in Photojournalism for “A Bronx Family Album: The Impact of AIDS.”  I talked him into following me with his camera for a week as I went through my days with an audition, a memorial service, whatever, all leading up to visit with Doctor Jeffrey Greene who was one of the leading AIDS doctors in New York. 

Greene was stunned to find me in a hospital gown waiting for my exam with a photographer.  “I thought I had seen everything.”  Hart was excused for the prostate part of program, but somewhere in his archives there is a series of unfortunate images of yours truly with his ass hanging out inelegantly.  

A week or so later, a beautiful day, I was home and the phone rang.  It was Greene's very chipper nurse saying, "get out the champagne, you’re negative.”  All I could think was “no, no, not now, my photographer isn’t here “.  

Peter Hay Halpert, collector and writer, was my very best support with P+FUAA and seemed genuinely to have my back which I appreciated.  observed that when it came to telling tales on myself, and it was a good story, I had absolutely no narcissism about embarrassing myself.  

Silly vain HIV negative me.  

This is a period of time when I went from being scared of my shadow to being fairly fearless.. If you had a dollar and had looked at a photo, I figured I could demand the dollar.  It was easy to talk about a cause I believed in.  It had nothing do with putting myself forth.

I did feel that the fine art community had been hit up for a lot of money and that there might be value in trying to expand our reach.  Elsewhere in this volume there is the tale of the Duane Michals’ P+FUAA holiday card.  But in this period I systemically introduced myself to every good photo editor in town to try to involve them.  And I met many dazzlingly talented generous folks, with many of whom I am still friends.   

I took an idea from theatre, classes in how to audition and refashioned it into a symposium about “How to Get Published in The New York Times Magazine, New York, The New Yorker, etc.  The legendary Kathy Ryan from the Times did those panels for me year after year.  She is the best at her job and she made those panels a success.  She is quite deservedly revered.

Her husband is Scott Thode.  He had also been an actor like me and was becoming a photographer (and photo editor) with a deeply felt series on a young girl with HIV named Venus.

She seems triumphant, a star of her own hard fought story.  What a gift to be celebrated in this way.  This is joy.

In time Scott and I would team teach at the School of Visual Arts sharing a sensibility that was generous and concerned.  We both learned from it because when you teach you bear responsibility for presenting yourself and your ideas clearly.  That was the most important take away.

When I worked on the text for my book “The Unseen Eye”, I regretted missing the chance to talk specifically about the many great people in my life in photography.  I hope some of that has been remedied here.  

Thank you.

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