Piedad “Pete” Fontanes Bernikow Celebrates Life in the Face of Challenges by Lester Strong Approach the visual art of Piedad “Pete” Fontanes Bernikow and you will encounter works of lush colors and abstract, sweeping designs that intrigue the eye and invite the mind to wander into imaginative flights of fancy. But the visionary, even playful nature of the images belies their source: deep personal experiences with illness and several brushes with death that have taught Fontanes Bernikow the value of bringing beauty into the world [...]

Photographer Edo Zollo talks with A&U’s Chael Needle about documenting the diversity of living with HIV/AIDS *** Thirty portraits of thirty people living with HIV/AIDS from all walks of life and from all over the U.K.—a new exhibition of work, two years in the making, from photographer Edo Zollo has finished a successful run in London and will be traveling throughout Britain for the rest of 2013. All of the subjects in “Stand Tall, Get Snapped” differ in terms of when they were diagnosed, and [...]

Angela Leroux-Lindsey explores the long-lasting effects of Frank Moore’s toxic beauty From the moment of his HIV diagnosis, Frank Moore’s painting became an apparatus of criticism against industrial medicine and bio-engineering even as his body, kept alive by pharmaceuticals, endorsed them. This paradox informed his work for fifteen years. Moore is rooted in thematic spaces that have magnetic emotional cores, pulling social, medical, economic, and environmental controversies into paintings that remain deeply personal. Moore did not use his illness as an opportunity to project self-pity [...]

Imbued with Asian mythology, the photographs of Cameron Wolf embrace a Thai community’s creative response to HIV/AIDS by Sean Black Fourteen years after A&U first featured the subtly provocative work of Cameron Wolf, PhD, MSc, his artistic manifestations, paired with a heightened social consciousness, continue to break down global barriers while illuminating successful links between art, stigma reduction, and public health. His alluring work challenges Western sensibilities on the sex trade by confronting us with a compassionate look into the delicate humanity and sensitivity of a [...]

With the help of his partner and subject, a San Francisco photographer commemorates the colorful lives of friends lost to AIDS by Chip Alfred When you look at the body of art surrounding the AIDS pandemic, you see a lot of thought-provoking yet often dark imagery. When photographer Michael Johnstone almost lost his eyesight from CMV retinitis, he decided to take a totally different approach. Along with his partner, David Faulk, he developed Mrs. Vera’s Daybook, a bold, brash photo collection. “It had to be [...]

New York City artist Mario Sostre offers a mixed media recipe for keeping everybody in the know about HIV/AIDS by Alina Oswald Sofrito is a combination of onions, peppers, and cilantro. Mix them in a blender or food processor, and you get a paste that Latin cultures use for cooking. “Sofrito” is also an artwork series by mixed media and collage artist Mario Sostre, which was later published as an e-book. With “Sofrito,” as it happens with most of Sostre’s pieces, the artist was debating [...]

Filmmaker & photographer David Binder charts Gail Farrow’s legacy to her family by V. Anderson I am writing to you now because I am afraid I won’t be alive to see you all grow into fine young men.” Gail Farrow’s words, in letters to her sons—Ronald, Jr., Frank, Kenny, and Benny—dictated to a nurse from her hospital bed, are the driving force of the film, Calling My Children. Starting with his 1988 photo essay, director David Binder weaves the extraordinary photographs he took of Gail [...]

Alina Oswald Talks with Artist Nancer LeMoins About AIDS Stigma, Fighting for More Resources for Women Living with HIV/AIDS and Environmental & Economic Crises Silence equals death…so let’s make some noise. The thought came to mind upon seeing Nancer LeMoins’ Free Yr Demons, an older art piece created (as I found out) as a response to the AIDS murmurs the artist kept hearing, murmurs that made her question: Why not speak up and make some noise? “I hope that making art is making noise,” LeMoins [...]

Artists Draw on Experiences to Make the Breadth of AIDS Visible by Chael Needle Reflecting on President Reagan’s silence around AIDS in the 1980s, Tony Kushner stated in the June 2012 issue of A&U: “And in a way we are back there again where nobody wants to hear about [AIDS] and talk about it anymore. It is hard for the human race to countenance what this virus has done to our world. So it’s become invisible again in a frightening way.” According to the World [...]

Photographer Darcy Padilla Addresses the Complexities of Poverty and the Difficult Task of Documenting Pain by Sean Black It was February 28, 1993, and Darcy Padilla and Julie Baird were seemingly destined to meet. For over a year, Padilla had been traveling with a medical team, consisting of a doctor, a nurse and a social worker, documenting people with AIDS, too sick to travel to a doctor’s office or a clinic. Referring to the similarities of the late 1940s’ Life Magazine photo essay by W. [...]