People with AIDS

This extraordinarily moving volume tells the stories of 15 people with AIDS (PWAs), laying bare the physical and psychicstet/rl devastation wreaked by the virus. The text consists of firsthand accounts by the PWAs and several epilogue-like letters and statements by family and friends (all but one of the PWAs have died). Nixon's photos are uncompromisingly realistic, showing the progressive physical degeneration that is the disease's trademark. Most affecting are pictures of Tom Moran, a former alcoholic, whose boyish face and body project both childlike hopefulness and mature stoicism. Nixon's photo of Bob Sappenfield, lying in bed being hugged by his parents, his mother looking sweetly and sadly at the camera, his father with his eyes peacefully closed, expresses indestructible parental love. Ultimately, what makes this book so powerful are the words of the PWAs themselves, which articulate the wrenching emotional evolution undergone in an attempt to reach a plateau of peace. Tragically enough, for most of these men and women, peace is found only at death. Bebe Nixon is an Emmy Award-winning television documentary producer, and Nicholas Nixon is the author of Portraits of People. (June)