Essay-review

A review of 2 picture-books of People with AIDS: Nicholas
Nixon's Pictures of People and Rosalind Solomon's Portraits in
the Time of Aids. The critical part of the authors review has to
do with the representation of people with Aids and the ongoing
debate on 'the significance of illness within the larger
framework of identity'. For press-photographers the identity of
people with AIDS is their disease 'maximized for the camera'.
Photojournalists and art photographers are heavily biased
towards photographing the most 'readable' afflictions, i.e.
Kaposi's sarcoma, which accounted for 77% of the photographs of
people with AIDS, while only 22% of initial AIDS diagnoses
related to Kaposi's sarcoma. In other words, the sarcoma figures
as the 'outward' visible sign of AIDS. The problem posed by the
author is not the control of circulation of images of people
with AIDS, rather the control of the meanings of the images.
Both Nixon and Solomon leave unchallenged the notion that AIDS's
meanings are largely private, woven by isolated individuals,
dyads and triads.


Citaten:
Dreuilhe, Emm.: Mortal Embrace: Living with AIDS (1988)
Treichler, P.: AIDS, Homophobia and Biomed. Discourse (October 43)
Crimp, D. (ed): AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (1988)
Fee, El./Fox, D.M.: AIDS: The Burden of History (1988)
Grover, J.Z.: AIDS: Keywords (October 43 p.17-30)
Nixon, N.: Pictures of People (1988)
Solomon, R.: Portraits in the Time of Aids (1988)