It’s been this way for more than forty years: Madonna’s shows leave no room for improvisation. The carefully timed schedule is the same for every concert, anywhere in the world. So that the viewers of the four shows The Parisians of the 65-year-old singer will undoubtedly be in front of a particularly commented table (in technical jargon, part of the show) of the Celebration tour at the Accor Arena on November 12th, 13th, 19th and 20th, which took place on November 14th. October at the O2 Arena in London.

When performing the song Live to tell the tale from the album True blue, Released in 1986, Madonna sits aboard a capsule that moves her through the air. Eight large screens of around fifteen meters will then be shown one after the other. On the first page a portrait of Martin Burgoyne, his roommate in New York in the 1980s. On the next that of Christopher Flynn, his former dance teacher. And then the artist Keith Haring, with whom she was close, and others (the filmmaker Howard Brookner, the actress Cookie Mueller, the photographer Herb Ritts…).

They were all near him. All died of AIDS. And she accompanied them all until their death, often paying their medical expenses, visiting the death halls of New York hospitals, collecting donations… So many actions that made her famous, including the actress Liz Taylor, who was most involved in this committed to the cause. The portraits of his friends will give way to several hundred other anonymous people who also died of AIDS.

250,000 subscribers to the online memorial

These images come from an Instagram account, The AIDS Memorial, an online memorial with two hundred and fifty thousand subscribers. Internet users send portraits of a missing lover, friend, father, brother or son – the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s mainly affected homosexual men – accompanying them with a few words. It’s about lives shortened, the helpless anger of loved ones, days that don’t go by without thinking of the deceased.

There is only one man behind this initiative: Stuart, a Scot, who wants to remain unclear about his complete identity, his age and his origins in order, as he says, to… “Don’t pull on the blanket [lui] ». On the phone he says that he opened the Instagram account in 2017 : “AIDS has always played the role of a bogeyman in my life. I had to deal with it. I posted pictures of people who died. Internet users encouraged me and told me about their loved ones. I invited them to imitate me. » Since then, the AIDS Memorial has published thousands of profiles.

You still have 55% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.