Nixon's art zeros in on the inescapable fact that each person resides—for life—within a single body. He has photographed people of all ages, including the very young and the very old. In most of his pictures it is obvious that the subject and the photographer have agreed to collaborate. There are occasional moments of joy or anguish, but a spirit of sober frankness prevails. Rooted in meticulous craft that renders the fall of light on flesh with uncanny delicacy and precision, Nixon's pictures are at once gentle and unflinching.
In 1987, six years after AIDS was identified—and when diagnosis most often meant death—Nixon (in photographs) and his wife Bebe (in words) began recording the lives of people with the disease. In 1991 they published a book that traces the illnesses of fifteen people through photographs and texts of varying lengths. The first to die was Tom Moran. This photograph, made in February 1988, is the last in a sequence of twelve that Nixon began taking in July 1987.
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, p. 105.
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