“There can be no direct communication where I can feel totally free in expressing myself, my ideas, my desires, and my experiences,” David Wojnarowicz says in his taped journals, recorded in the 1980s.
In fact, we remember David as a great communicator—an artist, writer, activist, and friend whose own words speak volumes. Below is a brief selection.
ON BEING AN ARTIST
“It’s a compulsion to make things. To make sense of my life. It makes me feel relieved about the experience of living.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1988
“I never really see myself as a photographer. I don’t see myself as a filmmaker. I don’t see myself as an artist. Yet I know I’m an artist. I know that I’m compelled to make things.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1988
ON PHOTOGRAPHY
“History is made by and for particular classes of people. A camera in some hands can preserve an alternative history.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
“Everything I do with a camera is like a journal. I take fragments of things. If people were to look at my years and years worth of negatives, they would wonder what the hell was he shooting at? ” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
ON THE PRE-INVENTED WORLD
“I don’t believe in an afterlife really; it’s just another sucker-trip to allay the anxieties of people who are forced by the machinations of the pre-invented world to leave their living for later.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1988
“To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific repercussions in the pre-invented world.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1989
“First there is the World. Then there is the Other World. The Other World is where I sometimes lose my footing.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
ON DIFFERENCE
“If you are a member of a minority group it’s a simple thing to be aware that laws are … devices to control diversity and silence it.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1988
“Some of us are born with the cross hairs of a rifle scope printed on our backs or skulls.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
ON HIV/AIDS
“My rage is really about the fact that when I was told that I’d contracted this virus it didn’t take me long to realize that I’d contracted a diseased society as well.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1989
“And as each T-cell disappears from my body, it’s replaced by ten pounds of pressure, ten pounds of rage, and I focus that rage into nonviolent resistance.…” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
ON ACCEPTANCE
“At the moment of diagnosis, I fully gave up that desire to fit in, and started realizing that those places where I didn’t fit and the ways I was diverse were the most interesting parts of myself.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1990
“We can all affect each other, by being open enough to make each other feel less alienated. We all are able to have a profound effect on each other, a positive effect that sustains us. I ain’t no Jesus.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1990
ON DEATH
“Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
“If I die it is because a handful of people in power … believe I am expendable.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
ON ACTIVISM
“It is exhausting, living in a population where people don’t speak up if what they witness doesn’t directly threaten them.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
“I have a desire to open up certain boundaries and release information that unites the psychic ropes that bind the One-Tribe Nation.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991
“The work that anybody does as an artist—if it doesn’t reflect resistance then they’re helping a system of control become more perfect.” —David Wojnarowicz, 1991