In the mid-1970s, William Gale Gedney arrived in South Bethlehem to hunt for subjects to photograph. He was a slim 43-year-old with wavy brown hair. Gedney was dedicated to his art in a precise, quiet way, earning him the nickname "the invisible photographer."

He was traveling on a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Photography, on his way to San Francisco and Los Angeles. However South Bethlehem drew his attention in 1975 and 1976.

Coincidently, Gedney found himself in St. Michael's Cemetery, at the exact spot that Walker Evans had photographed in 1935. He walked the streets of South Bethlehem late at night, creating strong black and white photos of houses, buildings, streets and cars.

Gedney never cared about adulation or approval for his art. He was already feeling the effects of a mysterious disease that no one could identify. Alone, without family and friends, Gedney bravely fought off the draining effects of this disease and traveled the world to follow his calling.

Gedney was born in 1932 in Greenville, N.Y., to William Gale Gedney and Violet May Tryon. A younger brother, Richard, arrived a few years later. His father was a maintenance supervisor for the Otis Elevator Company.

The father's work took the family to Albany, New York, where Gedney spent most of his childhood. Through a state scholarship, Gedney attended the Pratt Institute and studied photography under Walter Civardi, a well-known Life magazine photographer. Upon graduation in 1955, he worked as a commercial photographer for Condé Nast and Glamour magazines. Within two years he left the magazine world behind to devote himself to photographing subjects of his choosing.

Gedney succeeded in following his dream with periodic graphic design jobs and grant awards to subsidize his travels. During the 1960s, he created his most famous series of photographs.

Gedney traveled to the coalmines of eastern Kentucky to stay with and photograph the Couch family then the Cornett family. In this series, the "invisible photographer" recorded the relationships between the members of the large family. Gedney catches their natural interactions on camera as if he is not there. He remained friends with the Cornett family for many years, writing to them and visiting again in 1972.

In 1968, Gedney was hired to teach photography at both Pratt Institute and Cooper Union, which he did until he died. Over his 30-year photographic career, he traveled around the United States, Europe, Japan and India. In 1987, Gedney was diagnosed with AIDS and Kaposi Sarcoma. In his last years, he relied on the care from his long-time friends, Lee and Maria Friedlander.

Gedney died at his home on Staten Island in 1989 just as the first drugs were developed to treat the disease.

In 1992, his brother Richard and the Friedlanders donated photographic items, notebooks, diaries, correspondence to the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.

Since his death, Gedney's photographs have appeared in countless magazines, art exhibits and in the definitive book on his life, "What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney," edited by Margaret Sartor (1999).