HIV/AIDS in Photography: Nan Goldin, Albert J. Winn, Edo Zollo

Nan Goldin: Gilles' arm, 1993

"I think AIDS changed the visual arts and that art can change lives." (Albert J. Winn)

It is still a month before the World AIDS day so there's time enough to have a look at HIV/AIDS and photography. My twitter feed, my Facebook page and some other news sources have been bursting with HIV news recently - whether it was about rising infection rates in China, a new HIV strain discovered in Russia, further vaccine trials or the intriguing-looking documentary film How To Survive A Plague coming to the UK (watch the trailer below)...

....therefore I rummaged through my little photo collection and rediscovered a few of my favourite photographs on the topic. Photography has played a vital part in the fight for visibility and acceptance, and experienced a significant change with the emergence of AIDS activism.

After 1981, when the immune disease was discovered, photo journalists hit on the mysterious 'plague' with the same sense of sensation and insensitivity as the physicians and the public, where it soon became known as the 'gay plague' or 'gay-related immune deficiency'. Ill persons were portrayed as outcasts, stigmatised, victimised, singled out by cruel fate. Popular photographic methods included the prominence of visibly ill bodies, the subjects avoiding the camera's gaze, a deliberate play on harsh light and shadow - often backlighting - not unlike the way criminals are depicted. It was a brutal look cast from the outside on the 'victims', going along with the zeitgeist of the early 1980s, fueling fear and discrimination.

Nicholas Nixon: Donald Perham, Milton, N.H., December 1987

These pictures surely have their place in history. However, I prefer looking at pictures that were produced a little later - when communities started to build, and pictures were taking within the structures of support and empowerment; basically, when the gaze changed its direction, when it became the point of view from within the community.

There are wonderful examples of photographs - mainly self portraits - taken by persons with AIDS. There is the warm-hearted, outspoken project My Life Until Now by Albert J. Winn - he decided not to be defined solely by his infection and photographed himself in his environment - with his partner, in his kitchen, in front of the TV. You can play a little "I spy with my little eye..." game with his pictures, spotting all the different elements he deliberately included in his pictures to show that he has a life beyond AIDS: the Jewish candleholder, his books, his dog... very simple, but very effective. Suddenly the pictures of AIDS are not about death, but about life.

Albert J. Winn: Hanukkah 1995

There are also the pictures of people supporting their ill friends. These pictures are more occupied with death and suffering, due to their nature as testimonies of the survivors. Nevertheless they are made with so much more sympathy than any of the early photos. One of the most notorious photographers in this context is, of course, the brilliant Nan Goldin who saw her friends dying and still had her camera always with her. Her pictures immediately evoke an emotional response, the deeply personal relation between Goldin and her subjects affect the audience, even today, twenty years after Gilles' death.

Nan Goldin: Gotscho Kissing Gilles

AIDS has gone a long way, from the 'gay-related immune deficiency' to the scourge for Africa to a highly mystified STI. AIDS is not necessarily fatal anymore, but living with it is everything but easy. I think it is important to keep the awareness up, to make the disease visible - not in a Nicholas-Nixon-way, but in whatever way is appropriate and helps to end the stigma. The pioneers from the AIDS communities have paved the way. 

I will leave you with a picture from a pretty recent, committed and in-depth project by the London-based photographer Edo Zollo, Stand Tall, Get Snapped: 30 HIV+ people, which combines beautiful, positive portraits with the personal story of the photographed individual.

Edo Zollo: Anca, 29, 13 years HIV+

I think it's this dreary weather that makes me think about death (or last week's lecture). Ugh. I'll stop, for now.