LIFE AND DEATH FRAMED
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Much of photojournalism about disasters, war, disease and famine is so voyeuristic it is almost close to pornography. But Gideon Mendel's photographs of Aids in Africa aren't intrusive. He doesn't 'capture' images of people dying in the conventional photographic sense but rather allows individuals the chance to give their own personal testimonies about living and dying with the virus.
Mendel makes visible and intensely personal the day-to-day of living
with HIV, and by doing so hits home in a way endless fine words and statistics
can never do. He manages to turn the horrific statistics of HIV and Aids
in sub-Saharan Africa into moving personal stories of hope and despair,
community activism and action and even optimism. His new book of photographs,
A Broken Landscape, and the exhibits themselves have won him much media
attention.
Born and raised in Johannesburg, 43-year-old Mendel spent most of the
1980s chronicling the struggle against apartheid in his native country.
But it was his
experiences in London that made him start photographing people with HIV.
