I first met Venus Williams in May of 1987. I had just finished a two year photo essay on Bailey House, one of the first residences for homeless people with AIDS in New York City and wanted to start a new photo project on what it was like to be homeless and living on the streets with HIV. I had spent several weeks traveling the subways talking with homeless people trying to find a single individual to focus on. One day while I was going up to Manhattan's Upper East Side to view the Whitney Biennial as I exited the subway on 77th Street and Lexington Avenue I saw her panhandling right outside the entrance. I walked around the block once, then twice to build up my courage to introduce myself. The third time as I walked by she said, "Well don't say Hi". I stopped, sat down and began a 10 year adventure. An adventure that took us from a methadone clinic to a shooting gallery, from a hospital bed to church steps, from the streets to a room of her own and from the subject of a story to a dear friend. I became a part of Venus' family and she a part of mine.
Venus' individuality, as conveyed in her often humorous, painful and insightful understanding of life seeped into your pores and carried you away. She was capable of making jokes about her own death one minute, and crying about the death of a close friend the next. She lived a life that spanned the socioeconomic worlds of the middle class neighborhood in Montclair, New Jersey where she grew up, to a shooting gallery in East Harlem. She worked in a library and danced in burlesque. She lived a diverse life that fascinated and repelled those who knew and loved her. It was her intensity, her fierce independence, and most importantly, her tremendous love and caring which grabbed you by the heart and refused to relinquish its grip. A grip she still has on all of us who knew and loved her.
Venus died on August 7, 1997. My photos are a tribute to our friendship.