Coincidentally I finished The Compassion Protocol on World AIDS day. Hervé Guibert (1955-1991) was a French gay man who died of AIDS in 1991. Under the reprieve of an experimental drug (a double-blind study) he regained enough strength to chronicle the last few months of his life.

"This confrontation every morning with my nudity in the mirror was a primal experience, lived through again every day, I can't say the prospect helped me to extricate myself from my bed. Nor can I claim I've felt pity for the fellow in the mirror, but it depends, some days I get the feeling he'll make it, because people did come back from Auschwitz, at other times it is obvious he is condemned, he's en route for the tomb, ineluctably."

-Hervé Guibert, The Compassion Protocol, Page 7.

Photos by Guibert