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.

Thank you again, Michael Wichita at the AARP for producing this story for the Bulletin last year:

When the Reverend Dr. Franke decided he was no longer able to care for himself, he relocated to Little Rock, AR, to be closer to his family. After a thorough search for just the right place, he applied to – and was accepted by – a tony assisted living facility in North Little Rock where he thought he could be happy. Less than a day after he moved in, Dr. Franke was forced to move out of his new home because of his HIV-status. With the help of Lambda Legal, the family sued; the case settled in 2010.

“I thought it was an injustice. They have no right to throw us out, and I’m not gonna allow them to do that.

What if there are many other older people, and this is the first wave of them, who are not used to speaking out about anything, and they’ll just quietly pack up their blankets and leave? And I thought, damn, that’s not right.”    

Dr. Robert Franke, 1933-2011

For more information on the Franke family’s legal case that challenged unlawful housing discrimination in a civil suit, read about it at Lambda Legal and check out our featurette and reference page at The Graying of AIDS.

A selection of images from the Despers steel drum yard in Crown Heights, 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.

I had covered the issue of conversion therapy once before, for Time Magazine in 2005, for a feature story by John Cloud that looked at two very different retreats for teenagers: The Point Foundation’s scholarship seminar that encourages young lgbt people who struggle with overcoming family rejection to succeed to college, and Exodus International’s Freedom conference, an evangelical gathering that aims to help people overcome their homosexuality through prayer.

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.

And, honored to have the project featured in two very different publications, Time.com’s LightBox photo blog and the American Academy of HIV Medicine’s Magazine, which devoted the fall issue to the new treatment guidelines for older patients with HIV.

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.

As a photographer I am fascinated by rituals of public grief, and as with any other celebrity or public figure’s passing, shrines sprung up instantaneously, meshing the heartfelt with the canned, professional homage with effusive hero worship. The whimsical and spontaneous outpourings were met with deft corporate marketing, turning Apple stores across the country into cathedrals, their glass facades plastered with (conveniently provided) yellow post-it notes to resemble monochrome stained glass windows. As much as we seek community in the virtual realm these days, there was something about leaving a tangible mark – on paper, in person – that seemed deeply rewarding to passersby. At least momentarily, until the moment had to be eternalized by photographing it with iPhones and Androids, sending it off into the digital afterlife.

Photographed at the Meatpacking District Apple store location.

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. On Governors Island,  a beautiful stretch of parkland that once functioned as a military base, 4heads has reclaimed five sections of Building 12 (abandoned former military housing) and invited roughly 120 artists and a handful of galleries from around the world to use a room in the barracks to showcase their work.  Our installation, which “deconstructed” the linear narratives of the multimedia documentary to create a sound and room installation accompanied by image projections, can be found in Building D, on the ground floor. For the closing day, a line-up of musicians, performance artists, and interactive exhibitions will be added to the program.

Exhibitions are open 11-4 Fri & 11-6 Sat/Sun. Both the art fair and the brief ferry rides that deliver visitors to the island are free; ferries leave from the Manhattan ferry terminal (next to the Staten Island Ferry) at regular intervals every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, while the Brooklyn ferry runs from Pier 6 (where Atlantic Avenue meets the water) on Saturdays and Sundays only. More detailed directions and ferry schedule information here.

                                                                                                                                               image courtesy of Viviana Peretti

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.

The most aptly symbolic sight of the day, in the end, was the USS New York anchoring in the Hudson River – a war vessel forged from steel of the destroyed twin towers, idling, while joggers and strolling families scarcely paid any attention. Life goes on. And yet, among the frenzy and spectacle there were small moments of grace, moments of people making the connection they had come to establish or renew.  Nobody owns the day, the site, the individual memories. Two days later, I was able to visit the just opened 9-11 Memorial, and was struck by how powerfully the simple design works in evoking the absence of the towers and providing a space for people to engage in their own reflections, away from the construction noise, and others taking pictures.

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.

I arrived back at the harbor just as the second tower fell.  By this time, evacuation efforts had begun and people were being ferried across the river to safety. A young woman, in shock, covered with dust, told me about seeing people jump from the towers to their deaths. Her testimony brought home how removed I felt from what was happening across the river.

Like many others in Jersey City, I had been on my way to Lower Manhattan when the attacks occurred. We were unable to cross into the city that day. All afternoon, as the Manhattan skyline burned, people came to the waterfront to take in the sight. For the first time since Pearl Harbor, an act of war and destruction, of outside aggression, had been visited upon America. Yet although we were eye witnesses to the events unfolding in time, separated from the scene only by the width of the river, there prevailed a sense of detachment that suspended onlookers in a strange limbo on this beautiful early fall day. The following morning I was one of maybe three people who managed to get on the first – and only – passenger ferry into Manhattan.

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.