Bearing All

A few months back, Bruce Weber told me of the AIDS Resource Center in New York and of its deeply practical generosity to a wide variety of men and women contending with the disease. He meant to publish a volume of photographs which he'd taken at a pond in the Adirondacks. They were views of the water, the sky, and of nude young men (plus an affable dog). He intended all profits from the book to benefit the AIDS Resource Center, and he asked me to join him and find a way to write some relevant foreword or preface. Sight unseen, I took the chance with a resolution that my part in the book would be a silent homage to Thomas Victor, a friend and distinguished photographer who had recently died of AIDS.

When 1 saw the pictures set out in order, I was struck at once (and with no coaching from Bruce) by their all-pervasive air of innocence and serenity. These unimpeded men, the noble dog, the clean water, and the lazy clouds—all moved in a whole other world of unselfconscious ease, of delight in the strengths of a vital body and its fellow creatures. Like any good sequence, the broad range of pictures makes a larger statement than any one image. And for me at least that statement suggests a mythical Eden—the farthest pole from our desperate needs and those of our kin in the human family. So I wrote a narrative poem about that first long beautiful day—the last such day in all of time—when our First Father strode alone in full perfection through paradise, seeking his mate.

We hope this book, this visible dream of joy and light, will bring real help to people now in pain and anguish.

REYNOLDS PRICE