The Gut-Wrenching Story Of The Man Behind The Photo

After The Photo

Therese Frare

Frare submitted the photos to LIFE, which ran the story in its November 1990 issue. It also won second place in that year’s World Press Photo competition for General News.

The image spread from national fame to international recognition in every country where AIDS had already taken a toll. In its 20th anniversary retrospective on the photo, TIME estimated that more than 1 billion people have seen David Kirby’s last photo.

The exposure was not all positive, however. Right away, Catholic groups, in a rare foray into functional aesthetics, complained about the composition of the photograph. The way Kirby’s father cradles his head, they argued, is blasphemously close to a very common motif in European Christian art called the Pieta, in which the grieving Virgin Mary cradles her dead son Jesus after his descent from the cross.

Other criticism came from gay and HIV/AIDS activist circles when a colorized version of the picture was used in Benetton’s 1992 “United Colors of Benetton” campaign. As it happened, the family had given the company permission to use the photo as a way of spreading the image to more people than would otherwise have seen it.

In The End

Therese FrarePeta lies in bed in the Pater Noster Hospice, where he had spent countless hours as a volunteer caregiver.

After David Kirby’s death, many of the people involved with the photo stayed in touch. Frare eventually moved to Seattle and found work as a freelance journalist. Peta, the half-Sioux, half-white, transgendered caretaker who had brought Frare into the hospice, continued working with dying AIDS patients until his own condition worsened in 1991.

Frare took several photos of Peta during his decline, and when he could no longer look after himself, the Kirby family took care of Peta — out of gratitude and love for how he had cared for their son. Peta died of AIDS-related illness in 1992.

For more on the stories behind iconic photos after this look at David Kirby, check out who the famed “Migrant Mother” truly was, and how photojournalism ultimately cost Kevin Carter his life. Finally, check out some haunting death photos taken just before the person died.

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