Remembering Dr. Robert Franke
Thinking of the wonderful Bob Franke, who passed away over the holidays at the age of 78. I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to interview this truly memorable and inspiring man about his fight against HIV discrimination in long term care.
Here’s to 2012 – Welcome!
A selection of images from the Despers steel drum yard in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. View the rest of this entry »
The Southern Poverty Law Center: “ex-Gay” Conversion Therapy exposed
SPLC is launching a campaign to draw attention to the damage done – mostly to young people – by so-called pray the gay away “therapy” approaches that are supported by various religious denominations in this country. As part of this media effort, I produced a series of portraits of Chaim Levin, an orthodox Jewish young man who has been an outspoken opponent of “reparative therapy” and sexual abuse in his religious enclave of Brooklyn.
Here’s a video (produced separately by TruthWinsOut.org) of Chaim and another young man recounting their experiences with Jonah, a – highly UN-orthodox – approach to attempting to cure Jewish youth of their same-sex attractions. View the rest of this entry »
The Graying of AIDS on World AIDS Day – new multimedia portraits, Time.com’s LightBox photo blog, and reaching HIV health care providers
For World AIDS Day, on December 1st, there’s lots of new material on the Graying of AIDS website: new video portraits on Bill, Robert and Sue; a new interview with Anna; a brand new blog on Artists Responding to Aging and to HIV/AIDS; and a first of many special “featurettes ” – themed, issue-driven resource guides and learning tools, this one on institutional HIV discrimination.
A very analog sidewalk memorial to Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs’ death from cancer at the age of 56 left people grappling with his legacy – undoubtedly he has to be credited for shaping the culture we live in like few others. As someone working in the visual medium I can appreciate how his life’s work of technical innovations enabled individuals to take creative control in the digital space. View the rest of this entry »
Final Weekend – Governors Island Art Fair & Graying of AIDS installation
Sunday, 9/25 is the official Finissage, or closing day, of the 4th annual Governors Island Art Fair.
The Graying of AIDS project was thrilled to present our work as part of this month-long group exhibition, which is curated by 4heads, a New York-based arts group that transforms otherwise unused spaces into unique environments for the exhibition and performance of diverse artistic work. View the rest of this entry »
Ground Zero – Ten years later
The tenth anniversary of September 11th was many things to many people. Patriotic side show, election year soap box, corporate sponsorship opportunity, major police and secret service operation. During the official commemoration on the morning of 9/11, Lower Manhattan was on complete security lockdown, with access to the memorial site granted to family members only. During the previous night and the afternoon and evening of the 11th, however, the area around the active construction site morphed into a carnivalesque state fair of commemorative tourism – with vendors hawking their wares and assorted conspiracy theorists their drama, while the local fire station turned into some kind of a petting zoo for grief pilgrims. View the rest of this entry »
Twin Towers – Ten years ago, 9/11/2001
I photographed the collapse of the Twin Towers from Jersey City’s harbor, just across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center. After the first tower had fallen, I briefly went home and saw what I had just witnessed reproduced on TV. I sensed that my experience of watching the South Tower fall was being supplanted by the repetitive, numbing loop of imagery on CNN, accompanied by the pundits’ analyses of what it all had to mean. View the rest of this entry »
50 Jahre Mauerbau – Berlin Wall anniversary
Images from an ongoing series exploring Berlin’s evolving landscape, documenting how Germany commemorates the vanished East and the country’s separation during the cold war. In a city ever-changing, where layers of empires past are piled on top of one another or simply disappear, efforts to hold on to history vacillate between earnestness and denial, romanticizing and academic analyzing, conservation and neglect – and in between the plaques and public art displays, commercial opportunism finds its niches where ever possible. View the rest of this entry »
NYC waterfront – Broad Channel, Queens, on July 4th
Photographing local fire works in Broad Channel, a Queens enclave of about 3,000 people living on the only residential island in Jamaica Bay. Part of an on-going series exploring the new, and old, NYC water front. View the rest of this entry »