Michael, a photography series by Forest Kelley, imagines the life of the artist’s uncle, an artist and gay man who was found dead at the base of a rock ledge—a presumed suicide—on June 14th, 1985, shortly after the first test for HIV antibody was licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. This work is less concerned with finding answers; its preoccupation is with the unknowable, with visualizing the memories, dreams, speculation, hopes, and fears that continue to resonate in his family and community. It is an attempt to do exactly what the artist cannot: to be alive within all of the trappings of another’s subjectivity and to illustrate internalized images with external ones.
