Talking pictures
Exhibition zooms in on the every day challenges which sufferers confront
Iziko Museum’s Slave Lodge is hosting a photographic exhibition featuring poignant snapshots of people from nine cities around the world living with HIV/Aids. The exhibition is named Through Positive Eyes:10 Years. 9 Cities. My Photo. My Story and opened recently.
STRIKING photographs surround the walls of the Iziko Museum of South Africa’s Slave Lodge museum in Cape Town. The gleam from the photos on the screens and frames capture poignant snapshots of people from nine cities around the world living with HIV/Aids. Below the pictures, the words of the individuals look back on their experiences of life with the virus.
“Obviously I don’t like having the virus. But, I am alive. I go running. I go to the movies, to the theatre. The main problem is prejudice, but I go on living my life”, says Cleverson from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, recorded in 2009, as he leans solemnly over his medication in his photo.
The exhibition, Through Positive Eyes: 10 Years. 9 Cities. My Photo. My Story, which opened on June 1 is a project of the UCLA Art and Global Health Center in collaboration with Carol Brown, Stan Pressner and the Aids Foundation of South Africa.
The global photographic collaboration has been developed over the past 10 years by award-winning London-based South African photographer Gideon Mendel and Professor David Gere of UCLA centre. They brought together a group of people living with HIV/Aids – strangers to each other from around the world. They were given a camera to document their personal experiences. Soon, the camera became an emotive extension of themselves.
The exhibition aims to address the key issues surrounding the epidemic such as the stigma, social inequality and limited access to life-saving medication.
The purpose of the project is to empower people living with HIV/Aids.
“The impulse for making this project has been our conviction that fighting stigma is crucial in this era of widespread access to antiretroviral drugs – 122 HIV-positive individuals show their faces as a response to the stigma, putting their words and images at the heart of the response to the disease”, says Mendel.
The exhibition also features an array of commissioned and sculptural works and visitors immerse themselves in the narratives of HIV-positive individuals through live dialogue sessions.
The photos convey a sense of activism, with the intent of eliminating distrust and fear. “With my pictures,” says John from Washington in 2012, “I am trying to make a statement that every day life can be beautiful. Capturing beautiful things and moments in time is priceless.”
The exhibition runs at the Slave Lodge until February 28 next year. See throughpositiveeyes.org and www.iziko.org.za