Caught on Camera

The portraits seem to have exactly the same color and background. It’s the people — their faces and their expressions — that separate each image from the next. Their fear, sadness and shock are palpable. The stark photographs of Adrain Chesser’s family and friends catch them at a weightless and terrible moment: when Chesser says to them, “I’ve Got Something to Tell You.”

“I thought about having to tell people that I was HIV-positive, and I had this physical reaction based on fear, the fear of abandonment and the burden of having to reveal a secret,” he says. “Then I realized I could spiritually, ritualistically transform the experience.” Hence the title of his exhibit, opening this week at the Houston Center for Photography, which captures his loved ones off guard as he reveals his diagnosis. “Everyone that I photographed did the same little ritual as everyone else — same backdrop, two rolls of film — though they didn’t know it. And I realized that each person had a reaction based on their own past experience with death and illness.”

The photographs reveal real people in real agony, their faces scrunched and tear-stained. “They are the worst photos I’ve ever taken of my friends, but also the most beautiful,” says Chesser. In the moment, his subjects are reaching for the person behind the camera — and that, ultimately, creates a bond with the viewer.

Chesser hopes his images spark discussion about a subject that he thinks most people would prefer to push from their minds. “In the early days of the epidemic, people died because they were told to,” he says. “HIV/AIDS is not just an illness, but also this sex, morality, gay, self-hatred issue. It’s this cycle where younger generations repeat all this self-destructive behavior out of ignorance.” Yet in the end, Chesser’s exhibit is not so much a story about HIV politics as it is about honest communication. “It could be a 15-year-old girl telling her parents that she’s pregnant,” he says. “It’s about human experience and having compassion.”