Bay Area Reporter - June 21, 2001
David Fraser

One of the most striking photographs by Cramer, a grand marshal in this Sunday's San Francisco Pride Parade, shows U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), at the Capitol in 1998.

"You can see the concern in her face," said Cramer. "Some of my images are for sale, but not these of political activists - they're designed to prompt people to think."

His Web site - www.duanecramer.com - reveals Cramer's emotional engagements with the reality and beauty of his subjects, whether celebrities or affectionate men, gay or not. The silvery appearance comes from using an archival silver gelatin paper for printing; the viewer sees the subjects through a stage scrim which both augments and distances.

Much of Cramer's life is tied to narrowing distances. In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, the artist and activist talked frequently about how his father died of AIDS 16 years ago and how that event has shaped his concepts of life and pride.

Dr. Joe J. Cramer Jr. had been associate dean of the business school at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Early in epidemic

"He was a same-gender-loving person," said Cramer. "It was early in the epidemic. I was in my early 20s then, and my sister and I had a lot of shame [and] fear about what to tell people."

Later he and his sister "came out" with the fact that it was AIDS, not cancer, that had killed their father.

Cramer has made this event a central part of his life, as a gay man with HIV, an artist, and AIDS activist.

"By coming out of the closet, about my HIV status and my father's death, I have been able to raise my own self-esteem and hopefully create positive change in what others might find a tragic series of events," Cramer said.

"It's all about role modeling, particularly for queer youth." He and his family later made a panel in memory of his father for the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and Cramer himself showed the quilt panel to then-Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, during the full display in Washington, D.C. several years ago.

To Loachapoka

In 1998, with a year's social leave from his employer, Xerox, Cramer's AIDS awareness efforts took him back to school, this time as a speaker.

Among other places, he visited Loachapoka, Alabama. There, he talked to third graders, telling them he was HIV-positive, asking if they knew anyone who had died of AIDS. "One girl said, 'My grandmother died of AIDS,'" Cramer said, "and that opened things up."

At some school assemblies, up to 2,000 students heard Cramer speak. In St. Louis, Missouri, where poor neighborhoods have some of the highest HIV infection rates in the country, a superintendent listened to Cramer's story about his father, and permitted a peer-to-peer program on campus.

At a Birmingham AIDS conference held in a church, though, Cramer found himself on stage with Miss Alabama and a female gospel singer. "This woman looked at the group, and told them, 'Just wait till you are married; don't have sex till then.'

"I said, 'This is a high school group. Probably 70 percent have had sex already. This isn't about waiting to marry. Earlier today I met a woman at the conference. She was married, got HIV from her husband. She didn't know he was an IDU [intravenous drug user] and got he virus through the needle. Now he's dead; she has AIDS.'"

When students come up to him, Cramer added, they come individually. "I have my father's panel in the quilt with me, and it has his photograph.

I'm wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I talk about my father and the fact that I'm HIV-positive. People listen.

"This disease is preventable. It's challenging in the African American community because of homophobia. It creates a climate of shame and fear, discouraging people from taking lifesaving precautions.

"I tell students: You could get it through straight or gay sex. You need to avoid ignorance and low self-esteem."

With kids, Cramer said, they need a quick way to navigate through HIV. "I ask them to think about what's important to you ... do you want to have kids, if you get HIV you may not have kids.

"To gay kids, I say that you need to love yourself, respect yourself and your body. There's nothing wrong with having sex, but be safe: if you don't want to stick around, no one can stop you."

AIDS wards

Another approach Cramer has used is taking youngsters to AIDS wards in local hospitals. There, he said, they see how really horrible it can be.

"Not everyone looks healthy like me or the people in the [HIV drug] ads. "Typically, young people come out, but they don't see the hospices, the closed doors. This way they get to see what's behind the Victorian walls in our city, and that often stays with them.

"My mission as a photographer," said Cramer, "is to do activism through art. That's why I'm on the Frameline board. Documenting is a way to put things out there, to create positive images for the LBGT community, especially because you don't see a lot of positive images out there."

Cramer is also on the board of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center Project, and Lesbians and Gays of African Descent for Democratic Action. He is a past member of the Names Project board and was involved in last year's Millennium March on Washington.

Pride

"In my work," he said, "I try to focus on youth, people of color, people with AIDS. S.F. Pride is always a great opportunity for our community to be visible to the rest of the country, but also to each other.

Cramer said he's honored and humbled to be elected a grand marshal.

Thanking family, friends, and voters, he said, "I'm pleased to be one of a diverse group of individuals contributing in different ways."

Pride, he said, is sometimes disconcerting. "We still as a community have racism, classism, sexism ... all the other isms. Sometimes I'm saddened by all the isms in our community, and we need to try to overcome them. I think we can. I hope.

"It's always fun to celebrate, to reflect, to remember. For me, Pride is an inspiring day; really every day is a Pride day for me. I hope people can go back to their towns and cities and continue that message. We are a powerful force. This is an opportunity for us to be energized, empowered.

"But I always wonder, because of my father's death ... had he been out, would he maybe be walking here with me?
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