Tenderness and Rage: how groups affected by HIV found power, comfort and joy in Aids activism | Photography

FA new exhibition of Aids activists’ collective “death” photographs of plush breasts, lips and vulvas hand-sewn by HIV-positive women in London’s Trafalgar Square in the 1990s explores how care and protest improved the rights and dignity of those living with the disease.

Show, Sensitivity and Anger-most Welcome CollectionIt reflects how different groups affected by HIV, including gay men, women of color and refugees, in London, the UK and around the world, have found strength, solidarity, comfort and joy in Aids activism and support services.

The show begins by looking at the AIDS epidemic in London in the early 1990s. The documentary, Dancing While Diagnosed, tells the story of Landmark, a center for people affected by HIV/Aids in Tulse Hill, south London. Former staff and volunteers recall helping people through the violence, stigma and discrimination that came with diagnosis. But they also reveal the joy and solidarity that service users find in a rare safe space, including parties with DJs, drag queens and African music.

Marc Thompson, a former service user who later worked in HIV prevention and sexual health, said: “It was the only place I felt really safe about HIV. I didn’t have to explain it to anyone. There was no guessing or hiding, which really helped me navigate the early years of my own diagnosis.”

Thompson said the exhibition title reflects his experience with the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. “We were so hurt and damaged by everything we had experienced that anger came out through loss or protest. Places like the Landmark resonated with me in that sensitivity. It was a place where we could go to defuse some of the anger, to be cared for and to provide care and balm.”

Other exhibitions address a controversial episode Welcome to Trust’s own history. The booth includes photos, press reports and posters about Act UP’s campaign to reduce the high cost of AZT, the first successful HIV drug; This makes it prohibitively expensive for many people with the disease. The drug was produced by a pharmaceutical company in which the foundation had a 75% stake at the time.

Rob Archer, a co-founder of London and Edinburgh Act Up, bought shares in the pharmaceutical company, allowing him and other activists to question the company’s chairman at its annual general meeting in January 1989. Others staged a picket action in front of the building and held signs reading “We’re Coming to AZT Profits” and “People, Not Profits.”

Archer recalled how he cross-examined the president and chief executive about the company’s pricing policy and its treatment of people with AIDS. “I was pretty pleased to get under his skin,” he said. The campaign pushed the company to lower the price of AZT.

There are also photos from Gideon Mendel’s series WardIt follows the care and daily lives of four young gay men (John, Ian, Steven and Andre) in the Broderip and Charles Bell wards of the Middlesex hospital. Featuring intimate portraits of patients, loved ones and staff embracing and touching, the series became iconic for humanizing gay men with HIV at a time when they were dehumanized in the media.

Mendel said: “They tried to make it a very emotionally supportive place. Staff were encouraged to embrace patients. Touch was really important.

“What these four young men did was a particularly brave and powerful thing because there was so much stigma around it. Rumor has it there were photographers from the area as well.” [tabloids] He tries to take photos of people in the ward with long lenses. That’s why people were so afraid of the camera.”

Mendel remains involved in HIV advocacy, and the program also includes a project he co-founded: With Positive EyesIt supports people living with the disease to share their own stories.

Phindile is among those featured in Tenderness and AngerHe recently lost his job as an AIDS consultant at a clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, after the Trump administration cut funding that supported him.

Adam Rose, curator of Tenderness and Rage, said the show reflected the changing demographics of HIV, “who is affected the most”. [and] which groups are more likely to be contacted or face greater barriers to accessing treatment.”

He said his aim was to link the history of HIV protests and care in London in the 1990s to today’s campaigns around the world, and to highlight why this activism “remains so urgent, particularly in the context of ongoing cuts to HIV funding”.

The experiences of mothers with HIV are represented by a memory repository created by Angelina Namiba, which includes a published diary of her pregnancy and a framed handprint of her daughter. In the early 1990s, pregnant women were encouraged to create these boxes for their children so that if their mothers died, they would have something to remind them of.

Elsewhere, a selection of female body parts hand-sewn by women with HIV, Podium4Power improving body image and encouraging discussion about sex, intimacy and sexual health, living with trauma and illness.