By Maria Papapanagiotou

Back in 1990, AIDS was the curse of the times. Doctors and nurses were struggling with a virus that was galloping. Carriers, their partners and patients suffered, with the human body deteriorating into a torturous degeneration. The families of the victims mourned silently, while the shame of the disease covered them. In the midst of it all, the dignity of the human patient was lost, and that, too, in the depths of shame.

David Kirby was one of the first patients. A gay activist in the eighties, he was living in California when he contracted the virus in the late 1980s. When he found out, he was estranged from his family, but contacted his parents and asked them if he could return home. He announced to them that he would like to die close to them, with his family around him. The Kirby’s accepted their child.

Photos of David on his deathbed were taken by a first-year journalism student at Ohio University, Therese Frare, and were to become the most iconic images to accompany the AIDS disease ever since.

Shortly before the last breath and a look of dying, David’s image dispelled at once the horror that had until then haunted AIDS. For the feeling of human suffering he emitted was more powerful than the horror.

22 years later, the online edition of LIFE magazine illuminates the deeply moving story of the image that made the rounds like no other, and Teresa Frare remembers…

“While studying journalism in 1990, I volunteered at Pater Noster House, an AIDS hospice in Columbus. There I met Peta, a volunteer figure in the history of hiv. Among other patients, he was caring for David Kirby, who was now being treated at the home. He took me with him when he was alerted that David was very sick and had to run alongside him. I arrived at the house with him and stayed outside the room. At some point his mother came out and told me that it was the family’s wish that they all get a picture together of their child’s last moments. I timidly entered the room. The moments were so sacred, I felt like something incredible was happening. Shortly after David passed away.”

The first in a series, and central photo in the slideshow that Life.com brought to light, and back again in time, became a landmark. She won numerous awards, including the WORLDPRESS Photo AWARD when she was published in LIFE, but she became even more notorious in 1992 when Benetton used her in colour in a provocative advertising campaign. Raising the ire of the Roman Catholic Church and AIDS activists, calling the campaign a commercial exploitation of death itself, in the name of Ethics for Every Disease, Benetton’s advertising was called for, with the support of the international press, to be stopped after it had become known to billions of eyes.

“We never had any reservations about Benetton being allowed to use Therese’s photo in that ad campaign, David’s mother tells LIFE.com today. “My son literally melted from the disease,” she said candidly without equivocation, describing one of the truly horrific side effects of the disease at the time. Since then, with the development of treatment internationally, AIDS has become a chronic disease and no one dies from it but from other causes of death.

“We felt it was already time, in the first three years of this terrible disease, for people to see the truth about AIDS. If Benetton could help in this direction, it was welcome. It was the last chance for the world, who so believed in activism, to see David, a figurehead, an AIDS victim, a marker.”

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