Introducing Well Beyond HIV
I am thrilled to share the latest adventure in The Graying of AIDS project’s ongoing saga: we just launched a new collaboration with Walgreens, a national pharmacy chain that has been committed to HIV treatment and testing over many years. This month saw the Miami debut of Well Beyond HIV, a traveling exhibition and campaign featuring personal narratives and portraits of people living and aging with HIV.
This promises to be a great opportunity to reach new audiences and draw attention to the aging of the epidemic, and we’re super excited to find out where this project is going to keep going. For now, next step: San Francisco!! Go team!!
Happy 2015!
Video interview for Der Spiegel
For a feature story on the death of Maria Fernandes, a New Jersey Dunkin’ Donuts part time employee whose fatal accident between shifts came to symbolize workers’ vulnerabilities in the new US contract labor economy, I produced the location interview with Armando Gonzales, Maria’s former friend and co-worker, for an accompanying short video:
The Graying of AIDS story published in China
It’s wonderful to see that the original body of work from The Graying of AIDS project, created almost ten years ago for Time Magazine, is still finding new audiences – most recently in Spring Breeze Magazine / China Press for Persons with Disability.
A new home for Stories From a Graying Pandemic
Speaking of a new on-line presentation for our growing collection of stories… while we are freshly inspired by our experiences at AIDS2014 and at Photograpy Expanded to seek additional funding to support future creative collaboration and development of a more intuitive, user-friendly web archive, for now we have migrated our site over to a more easily searchable and downloadable temporary home at www.agrayingpandemic.org. Bye-bye, tumblr. It was good while it lasted. Back to WordPress.
We launched this interim site on World AIDS Day and will continue to tweak and expand on content and functionalities in the coming year. There are still more portraits and interviews left to edit from Australia, and longer versions of many interviews will be added over time!
Photography Expanded Symposium
Here’s the Graying of AIDS team (i.e. Naomi Schegloff and myself) presenting at the Magnum Foundation’s Photography, Expanded Symposium at Parsons The New School for Design.
The symposium capped a year of workshops and presentations that tackled issues of documentary audience engagement in the digital realm. The Graying of AIDS was among four projects that were selected for the pilot of a PhotoEx project development initiative, during which artists were paired with design and communications experts for one-on-one meetings to implement a digital strategy for their work. View the rest of this entry »
Melbourne! International AIDS Conference 2015
Here’s a quick preview of our latest participatory Graying of AIDS installation at AIDS2015. But first and foremost, a HUGE Thank You!! to all of our backers and supporters during the whirlwind, last minute Indiegogo fundraiser that made it all possible.
As usual, we were much too busy producing new work and interacting with visitors to our installation site to do a thorough job of documenting our process. But here are some snapshots, and to sum it all up: going half way around the word to continue our global series on aging and HIV was worth it in every way imaginable, and we can’t wait to share some of the amazing new portraits and interviews.
Age Is Not A Condom bus shelter ad campaign
Earlier this year, the Graying of AIDS project worked closely with New York City-based AIDS research, education, and advocacy organization ACRIA to create an intimate portrait series of older adults – alone and with “partners” – for their Age is Not a Condom HIV/AIDS and aging awareness campaign.
Memory, and death, in Chinatown
The week leading up to Memorial Day weekend saw a series of politically symbolic memorials and vigils in the neighborhood, beginning with the unveiling of Private Danny Chen Way, which had been a couple of years in the making, followed by an impromptu vigil for a local grandfather, Wen Hui Ruan, who had been viciously attacked and beaten on an East Village street. And finally, two days of memorials for Sister Ping honored the life of a woman who was hailed as saintly community benefactor by her Fujianese compatriots, while wanted, and eventually sentenced, as a ruthless “snakehead” and profiteer by the authorities.
Su Zhen Chen, Private Danny Chen’s mother, and Yan Tao Chen, his father, with the ceremonial street sign honoring their son.
Mothers in Charge, Chicago
Late last summer, I went to my former home town for the German magazine Brigitte to photograph an inspiring group of women who are organizing against gun violence on the South Side. I only had a couple of days to spend with Carolyn, Shirley and Mary, but their resolve and dedication to fight for their community in the face of the senseless tragedy that took their children and destroyed their families will stay with me. Here’s to some strong women:
