Joseph Hartney Jr.; Ballet Development Director

Joseph C. Hartney Jr., a photographer’s representative and the former director of development of the San Francisco and Joffrey ballets, died Thursday at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York. He was 44.

The cause of death was AIDS, said his mother, Adelaide Lammers.

In 1988, merging his photography and fund-raising vocations, Hartney founded an organization known as Photographers and Friends United Against AIDS. The organization has raised $1.4 million for AIDS research and service organizations throughout the country by mobilizing the talents of such noted artists as Annie Leibovitz and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Last year, the organization mounted a show entitled “The Indomitable Spirit,” which opened in New York and later moved to Los Angeles and Chicago. Funds were raised by selling limited edition portfolios of works and auctioning off selected photographs.

“Joe Hartney’s vision led photographers and their industry to respond generously to the challenge of AIDS,” said Mathilde Krim, founding chairwoman of the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

Hartney was born in Philadelphia. After serving four years in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, he received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College in 1973 and a master’s in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1976.

He moved to New York to work for a stock broker for two years before returning to his principal love, dance, as director of development of the San Francisco Ballet. In 1980 he moved to New York to assume a similar position with the Joffrey.

For the past seven years, Hartney has been a photographer’s representative, affiliated principally with the John Bean Studio in New York.

In addition to his mother, who lives in Folsom, Pa., Hartney is survived by three sisters and a brother.

Services will be held Saturday in Millmont Park, Pa., and a memorial service will be planned later in New York.