David Wojnarowicz, AFA Wildmon materials

Terry Gross: Now you're saying that he took one component of a larger mixed media collage work.

David Wojnarowicz: Right.

Terry Gross: And blew that up and presented that as being representative of your work. You've been working with mixed media images for a long time. Tell us a little bit about why you work in that form.

David Wojnarowicz: I guess emotionally and intellectually, it's the only way that I can represent what my experience in the world is. I do a lot of things. I write. I make videos, films, performances, paintings, photographs, et cetera. But the mixed media is, in terms of the paintings and some of the photographs, is just about the only way that I can approximate what it feels like to live in America at this point and time, given that when we walk out in the street, we're so heavily bombarded with visual information, whether it's store signs, newspaper covers, magazine covers, advertising, et cetera, that I like to use a variety of media that somehow approximates what it's like to walk down a street or to move through a space in contemporary America.

Terry Gross: Artist David Wojnarowicz. We contacted the office of Reverend Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. He declined to comment or be interviewed. This is Fresh Air.

Narrator: A federal judge ruled in Wojnarowicz’s favor and ordered Wildmon’s organization to send a corrective mailing to everyone who received the original, explaining the misrepresentation.

The interview you’ve been listening to was broadcast on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, which is produced at WHYY, Philadelphia, and distributed by National Public Radio.