The AIDS Crisis in America : Issues of Representation Through the Shock and Atrocity Photography
JOĀO SANTOS
existence in the United States ” ( Brier , 2018 : 95 ).
Alon Reininger - Ken Meeks , Patient With AIDS , Being Cared for by a Friend , San Francisco , California , 1986
To outline the story of AIDS is no easy task ( Halkitis , 2013 ). It began as “ an oddity : a scattering of reports in the spring and early summer of 1981 that young gay men in New York and California were ill with forms of pneumonia and cancer usually seen only in people with severely weakened immune systems ” ( Altman , 2011 ). Simultaneously , “ given the prevalence of the affliction among gay men , it was postulated that it was [ our ] lifestyles — multiple sexual partners and drug use — that damaged [ our ] immune systems , making [ us ] susceptible to the disease ” ( Halkitis , 2013 ). Furthermore , this epidemic that took thousands of lives “ exposed the limits of the US welfare state , the prevalence of racism and its effects on health , and the homophobia that undergirded a wholesale abandonment of people with AIDS ”. In this regard “ it is impossible to overestimate the extent of suffering and fear AIDS wrought in its first year of
It was in this context of crisis and atrocity , that “ Ken Meeks , Patient With AIDS , Being Cared For By A Friend , San Francisco , California ” is inserted . It is part of a larger collection of photographs of seropositive patients , captured by Alon Reininger during his time at the Contact Press Image agency ( Bulzone , 1988 ). Two years later , it was published in Life magazine , one of the first few that shifted the representation paradigm of the epidemic , by publishing strong images of the victims of the crisis ( MOCP , n . d .). In 1986 , it was named World Press Photo of the Year and is considered one of the “ emblems of the crisis ” ( MOCP , n . d .).
Alon Reininger , formerly a war photographer and an outsider to the Queer community , started documenting patients in the early years of the crisis ( Walker , 2006 ), when the disease was still taken as a mysterious cancer which was mostly affecting young overall healthy white gay men ( Brier , 2008 ; Altman , 2011 ; Halkitis , 2013 ). Reininger previously worked as a military medic in Israel , which as he stated helped to build some what of a resistance to trauma and atrocity ( Walker , 2006 ). His career as a photographer started in 1973 covering the Yom Kippur War ( WorldPressPhoto . org , n . d .) and as Alon noted it was precisely the humanitarian issue that attracted him to the AIDS epidemic : “ The gays were starting to get treated like the Jews were treated in Germany before the war ; people were getting beat and kicked . ” ( Walker , 2006 ). Even
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