It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic by Jack Lowery

It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic by Jack Lower Interesting history of early ACT UP development in the 1980s and 1990s. Specifically a group of people called Gran Fury who were the graphic designers behind such initiatives as "Silence=Death" and other slogans. I found it an original approach to look at activists group through their design initiatives. Who knew that fonts could be so contentious. The first half of the book illustrates the early years and formative years of the group, which ultimately was not a large group. Mostly this is the story of a group of people and their stories and relationships, and many stories of people dying in the early days of no testing and very little treatment.

The second half bogs down as the story just starts to document who was fighting with whom and who was dating who and the story, as with the people, lose their edge. But all in all an original way to look at activists. There is some information about earlier activists movement like the civil rights movement and Vietnam war protesting, and movements that came later like Occupy Wall Street and Me Too.