An Artist Spent Four Decades Photographing His Dad. Then Came Coronavirus

THE BOSTON GLOBE 
By Cate McQuaid

"Rock Bottom," 2008DAVID HILLIARD

David Hilliard last photographed his father in March, a week before the nursing homes locked down. “He was holding his old dentures from 1955, which he got in the Navy, in one hand and the new choppers in the other, with my hand on top of his head,” said the photographer. “I didn’t want that to be the last picture.” His father, Raymond William Hilliard, died on April 10 of COVID-19. His passing marks the end of a decades-long body of work for Hilliard. Raymond has been a favorite subject since the artist’s days as an undergrad at Massachusetts College of Art in the 1980s: reading Playboy in bed; puffing a cigar over lunch; sitting on a doctor’s examination table. [More]