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AIDS Affects U.$ ALL
The photography of Morgan Alexander
For AIDS in Culture II, Puerto Vallarta,
Mexico, December 2005
I have been a documentary AIDS
photographer for the past 15 years.
AIDS Affects U.$ ALL began in San Francisco in 1989 at The Maitri Hospice
for People with AIDS in the Castro District; it was the first buddhist
AIDS Hospice in the United States and at The Ambassador Hotel, a
single-room-occupancy hotel in the Tenderloin. I also went to sweat lodge in
Sebastopol, California where men infected with HIV/AIDS did prayer
ceremonies in the tradition of the Lakota (Sioux) Indians.
Since 1991, I have exhibited my
portraiture of people with HIV/AIDS in The United States and more
recently, in Juarez, Mexico & for the past two years as a traveling
show. In 2004, I went to Cuba with The Cuba AIDS Project several times to
document the AIDS community in that country. Cuba has the lowest infection
rate in Latin America and makes and distributes their own medicines. At
the same time, I visited La Tenda di Cristo and Misericordia y Vida, two
AIDS facilities in Juarez, Mexico where the incidence of AIDS in very high
due to border traffic. Images from Cuba and Juarez have been added.
AIDS education and prevention is
one of the keys to getting a grip on this pandemic. Images require no explanation;
they are visceral & enter under the radar into the very spirit of each
person. There is also accompanying text in English and Spanish. There are currently 38 pieces
in the show plus text for many of the images. They travel in 8 shipping boxes. If there are other photographs in
the permanent conference exhibition, you may have any number of
photographs that the space will accommodate.
A conference is a perfect place
for these images because over a period of time people walk by them,
looking and not looking, after meals, before meals, on breaks, day after
day. And they speak volumes
about AIDS. It is their task,
son tarea, even though most of them are no longer alive. There is no time left to present
pretty images of infected persons as if their lives are made physically,
emotionally and spiritually normal just by popping a few pills. I have documented this pandemic in progressive stages and feel
that this makes the most impact. In my recent work, there is an abundance
of Hispanic faces since the rate of infection in this group of people is
very high.
In addition, I have my own story to tell of how I got to
be an AIDS photographer and how this has affected my creative life. I did not start out this way. Quite frankly, I was minding my
own business, photographing Tibetan teachers, Zen monks and Native
American teachers. Over the
next 10 years, , I did shows of my AIDS work, put them in the closet and
took them out of the closet ad nauseum.
However, I knew there would come a time when I had to give them a
life of their own. That
time came two years ago when I drove them in March of 2003 to Santa Fe,
New Mexico. Since then, they
have traveled through the western United States –Santa Fe and
Albuquerque, New Mexico, Juarez, Mexico, El Paso and Austin, Texas,
Springfield, Missouri & Wichita, Kansas. I have also created a website
which is http//: www.aidsaffectsusall.com
where you can view the portraits I have done, accompanying text &
exhibition history.
25 January 2005
Ojai, California
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ORGANIZACIONES EN LA FAMILIA
ENKIDU
CUENTO DE LA SEMANA
Información en español:
