Eric Rhein met Ramsey McPhillips in 1997 at his exhibition called Eye on a Sparrow at the Froelick Art Gallery InPortland, Oregon. McPhillips was Mark Morrisroe’s boyfriend at the time of his death and facilitated Morrisoe's final self-portrait piece, taking his picture moments after his death in 1989. Rhein, having known Morrisoe from the East Village scene of the 1980s, honored him with one of his Leaves memorial pieces.
In the summer of 1997, Eric attended a festival that McPhillips held on his family farm in Oregon, the final resting place of Morrisroe’s ashes. McPhillips and Rhein became romantically involved at this time, as recounted in the prose piece, The De-Rhein Light. Rhein remained on the farm with McPhillips after the other festival guests departed, and the two began to take self-portraits in the reforested woods of the farm. These portraits document the bodily “rebirth” that Rhein says he experienced as a result of the protease inhibitors that were released in 1996. The self-portrait Lazarus, a reference to the biblical Saint Lazarus who was brought back to life by Jesus, is a document of this transformative time in Rhein’s life and his connection to McPhillips and, in turn, to Morrisroe.