After moving to New York in the late 1980s, Flash began to connect her photographic process with their work as an activist. She began to view their use of the cross-colour technique as a political statement that could subvert racial associations with the terms “dark” or “light,” as the skin tones of their subjects were inverted and became unrecognizable through this printing process. She was a member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and appeared in one of the famous advertisements for the artist activist collective Gran Fury’s “Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifferent Do” campaign with her then-girlfriend, Julie Tolentino. She was also a member of the artist group Art+Positive, established by queer artists to combat the art world’s homophobia. “Among all the sadness around AIDS,” Flash states, “there’s so much joy in the community that has held me.”