Isaac Butler

They're real people.

So like a real thing is happening.

So that's part of it.

And another thing is the immediacy of photography, the rapidness with which a photograph can be taken and then developed, is really important in this moment, I think, because of the AIDS crisis.

Because these artists, they're dying and all their friends are dying.

If you look at Nan Golden's work, she's taking very immediate photos in social gatherings and then printing them and getting them out there.

And so there's that kind of rapid response feeling to it as well.

The arts are really...

where the point of view and needs of people with AIDS in the LGBTQ community can be expressed during this time period because Reagan's not talking about it.

The religious right and the right wing is trying to stop people from talking about it at all.

And so the arts become a really welcoming home for that perspective because the arts have, you know, throughout history been a place for outsiders.

Well, one of the great ironies is one of the main ways they were doing it was by distributing these images to all of their followers to piss them off.

Right.

Like Jesse Helms.

And there's a guy named Donald Wildman who runs this group, the American Family Association.

You know, they are unbelievably major distribution vectors of the very images that they're trying to fight.

Yes.

I mean, one of the things my book is really about is pre-internet political organizing, right?

And it's really fascinating because the big thing that the right really pioneered, figured out, innovated on, and the left never caught up to them was direct mail appeals.

And what Donald Wildman is doing is he's taking...