back as, with eyes closed, he appears to stand in
time suspended, soaking the sun’s rays in a gesture
that is as deep in its expression of physical experi-
ence as it is ordinary. By contrast, Nixon’sFamily
Picturesseries (1985–1991) examines the artist’s
own immediate, familial relationships—those with
his wife, Bebe, and their two children, Clementine
and Sam—in some cases, offering a glimpse of the
artist breaching the frame in order to demonstrate
the full scope of these relationships.
In hisSchoolseries, published in 1998, a colla-
boration with Pulitzer Prize-winning child psychia-
trist Robert Coles, Nixon spent two years among
the children of three Boston-area schools: an ele-
mentary school in Cambridge, the Perkins School
for the Blind, and the prestigious Boston Latin
school. Working alongside Coles, Nixon chro-
nicled the habits and routines of children ranging
from the very gifted to the severely impaired, gath-
ering with clinical precision the subtle, fleeting ges-
tures that play on the surface and provide physical
clues to the unknowable, ineffable experience of an
interior self. Gary Moulton, Perkinsis one such
image—remarkable in its delicacy and allusion to
this interior, notable as proof of Nixon’s success as
an acquisitive documentarian working in abstract,
emotional terrain.
Nixon’s desire to ‘‘go deeper, get closer’’—his
continued efforts to achieve clarity of representation
by effacing himself as an author—has led him, over
the course of his career, to increasingly complex and
culturally potent subjects. His series People with
AIDS(PWA), a collaboration with his wife, Bebe
Nixon, attempted to document people living with
HIV/AIDS, the effect the disease has on their lives,
their families, and their identities. The series aroused
fierce condemnation and outrage from the HIV/
AIDS-activist community at its debut in 1988 at
the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The pub-
lished series is a combination of image and text—
text that, by and large, features the words of 15 HIV-
positive people talking about what is happening to
their bodies as they confront the realities of their
illness. The MoMA exhibition, however, consisted
of selected images only, a decision responsible for
much of the furor surrounding the exhibition, led
primarily by members of the activist organization
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), who
believed thePWAseries, in its unabashed survey of
the physical deterioration and anguish attendant to
advanced stages of AIDS, perpetuated dangerous
myths about people suffering from the disease,
myths that would ultimately encourage discrimina-
tory policies that harm people living with HIV/
AIDS. ACT UP demonstrators staged public pro-
tests outside of the museum, distributing manifestoes
and leaflets that demanded images of HIV-positive
people ‘‘who are vibrant, angry, loving, sexy, acting
up and fighting back,’’ as well as ‘‘no pictures with-
out context.’’ Robert Atkins, a journalist and art
historian who wrote extensively about thePeople
with AIDScontroversy, describes the special burden
of proof Nixon’sPeople with AIDSseries faced:
Nixon’s pictures are, in fact, often grim accounts of the
virus’ murderous capability, but they are also a welcome
record of its effect on a diverse, not-always-gay popula-
tion of heterosexual women-of-color and hemophiliacs.
As the first body of work exhibited on an extremely
public stage, they also suffered from impossible expecta-
tions...Nixon’s pictures were somehow expected to
appeal to everybody: to simultaneously win over bigoted
or uncommitted museum goers [sic]; and to foment acti-
vism and buck up the spirits of people with AIDS. No
single body of work could possibly work such magic.
(Atkins 1999)
In many ways, the controversy surrounding the
People with AIDSexhibition is similar to that sur-
rounding theNew Topographicsexhibition: where
theNew Topographicsexhibition challenged the pub-
lic’s expectation of what constitutes a photographic
landscape, Nixon’sPeople with AIDSseries chal-
lenged presiding notions of what constitutes a fair
and honest portrait—inevitably raising the question
of artistic responsibility: to one’s subject, as well as
one’s audience. For thePeople with AIDSseries, the
question rested, specifically, on how one documents
illness responsibly—particularly one so stigmatized
in American culture. Our intuitive belief that the
intimacies and details of our most personal experi-
ences are entitled to a certain degree of privacy is
well-supported by much of traditional portraiture,
which holds such mysteries at bay, well-protected
within the fog of romanticism and mystery. These
notions are directly challenged by portraits such as
Nixon’s, which neither covet nor protect, but aim
instead to disable such mysteries and expose the
realities they would otherwise obscure. The question
of artistic responsibility is especially acute when the
subject’s control over their own image is limited, as is
the case with thePeople with AIDSseries, as well as
Nixon’s work with thePerkins School for the Blind.
When the subject cannot return the viewer’s gaze
(Perkins School for the Blind), or cannot control the
physical manifestations of a debilitating illness (Peo-
ple with AIDS), the viewer is confronted with an
identity whose ownership remains ambiguous: who
controls this physical identity, if not the subject? The
degree to which Nixon’s images seem to privilege theNIXON, NICHOLAS