Angels in Our Midst - Hardcover

Text and photographs tell the stories of people with HIV and AIDS and their caregivers

"For human power, no set of people are as extraordinary as the caregivers who come, most of them unpaid, to help us manage our lives when life itself grows fragile and fearful. They are, collectively, an almost entirely invisible army of compassion". These are the words of Mary Fisher, AIDS activist, mother, artist and photographer, former advance woman for President Gerald Ford, former wife who, in a loving marriage, contracted the virus that causes AIDS. To make visible this "invisible army of compassion", Mary Fisher set out to photograph caregivers of people - children, women, men - with HIV and AIDS. She traveled from Connor's Nursery in West Palm Beach, Florida to an unnamed nursery at the women's prison on Riker's Island; from an AIDS clinic in Birmingham, Alabama to Rosie's Place, a home in Boston for women in need. To get their stories in photographs, Fisher had to move in close: into the subdued hospital rooms of the very sick, into the laughter of friends, both healthy and infected, who worked together in food banks preparing meals for housebound patients with AIDS. Moving in close was often difficult: "My cameras made me feel as if I were an intruder..". Determined, Fisher went on the road for four years to photograph and write the story behind the courage, dedication, devotion, and love of caregivers, the angels in our midst.