A huge photographic exhibition that arrives in Ireland next week tells the stories of some of the world's 40 million HIV sufferers. Joe Humphreys takes a look.
By the time you finish reading this article nine people will have died of AIDS. Last year almost 40 million people were living with HIV, 95 per cent of them in the developing world.Almost a quarter of the population of South Africa is infected with the virus. In five years there will be 18 million AIDS orphans. Rates of infection are increasing in every continent, including North America and Europe. AIDS caused 3.1 million deaths last year, or one every 10 seconds.How do you get your head around a problem of this scale? How do you convey it to others? One way is to avoid statistics and concentrate on the stories behind them. That's the approach of Positive Lives, an ever-expanding documentation of how HIV and AIDS are affecting people worldwide. The project started in 1993, containing a small number of images, mainly from African states. Now it has more than 1,000 portraits of HIV and AIDS sufferers, with most countries represented.
The photographs have been seen in 30 nations, with dramatic effect. In Thailand an image of an HIV-positive monk broke all sorts of taboos. In Kenya the country's first lady caused a storm by embracing an HIV sufferer at the opening of the exhibition. In Bangladesh the show brought political parties together to set up a task force on HIV and AIDS.
Now Positive Lives is coming to Ireland, and to mark the occasion an Irish chapter is being added to the exhibition by the photojournalist Alan O'Connor. He has chosen five subjects - four men and a woman - for the project. Although they are from a cross section of society, he avoids categorising them by how they contracted HIV, because, he says, "if the general public doesn't fall into one of the categories they can't relate to the subject". Instead of asking his five volunteers how they got HIV, "I asked them what their response was when they were told they had it. That's the jumping-off point."
John Daly of Actionaid Ireland, the charity that is hosting the exhibition, says there is a tendency for people to think that HIV and AIDS are nothing to do with them. "But some of the people in the exhibition are quite unlikely subjects." Among the most powerful, and poignant, images are those of children orphaned by AIDS and of sufferers of the disease who were captured on film, full of life, but have since died, sometimes because of a lack of access to treatment. "There are still very big taboos attached to HIV/AIDS in Ireland," says Daly. "We have to stop seeing it as a marginal issue."
Positive Lives is at the former Arthouse building, on Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin, from Saturday, February 5th to Saturday, February 25th (Monday to Saturday 9.30 a.m.-5.30 p.m., Sunday 1-3 p.m.). Admission free. Actionaid Ireland: 01-8787911.