Lola Flash, 4 ray, 1991

Lola Flash: My name is Lola Flash, and I'm a photographer.

When we're talking about 4 ray, this photograph was taken in Provincetown in the summer of '91. And I was at the beach, and I kind of looked up and I saw this wheelchair perch at the top of this sort of tarmac that was there to help with the erosion of the beach. And there was no one around, so I thought to myself, "It must be Ray." Ray probably wanted to come to the beach with me, and so I figured it was him. 

Ray was a dear, dear friend, like many from that time that passed away from AIDS. He was also an activist like myself. I can't believe that he would've been fifty-nine this year. The wheelchair symbolizes Ray, but also so many other people from that time who passed away from HIV because most of them ended up in a wheelchair because they were too weak to walk.

I often wear this SILENCE=DEATH button. I graduated from high school in 1981, and that was the first year that someone was in the papers and they said that someone died from HIV. So in many ways, I feel like once I graduated, I felt like I couldn't just take pretty pictures. I had to take pictures that talked about all of the problems in the world, well, at least, especially those that affected myself. Like racism, sexism, thinking about the marginalized people. You know there still is not a cure for AIDS.