The Visual Economy of HIV/AIDS in South Africa

When tracking the progression of Gideon Mendel’s photos, there is a shift from representations of suffering, pain, and death of people living with HIV/AIDS to those in which he aims to show people in a ‘positive, individualized way’. South Africa has the highest HIV prevalence in the world, claiming 20 per cent of the global population of people living with HIV, a whopping 7.7 million. Following its independence in 1994, South Africa's responses and representation of the HIV/AIDS epid

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