Photographic exhibition puts fresh focus on living with HIV/AIDS
On the opening wall of Through Positive Eyes, more than 120 people gaze straight at the viewer, unflinching. They are from 10 different cities across the world and their dress and demeanour differ dramatically. But they’re all HIV-positive and all perfectly open about their status. This multifaceted exhibition in a warren of rooms in the Iziko Slave Lodge, Cape Town, tackles the stigma the disease still carries four decades into the epidemic. It is codirected by Gideon Mendel, a South African-born photographer who has been documenting HIV/AIDS since 1993, and David Gere of the University of California, Los Angeles Art & Global Health Centre. This leg was curated by Gere, Carol Brown (Durban) and Stan Pressner (New York). But it is largely created by the people on the walls, who wielded the digital cameras they were given to document their lives, to devastating effect. Xoli, of Durban tells of her "blesser" who did everything for her — and gave her the virus when she was just 16 year...
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