AIDS in New York
dal 6/6/2013 al 14/9/2013
Segnalato da
6/6/2013
AIDS in New York
New York Historical Society, New York
The First Five Years. Drawing from the archives of the NY Public Library, NY University, and the National Archive of LGBT History, the show uses posters, photographs, and artifacts to tell the story. Contemporary are on view 20 breathtaking photographs by Claire Yaffa from the serie 'The Changing Face of Children with AIDS'.
For those who lost partners, children, siblings, parents, and friends to HIV/AIDS in the later years of the twentieth century, the memory of grief, fear, and mystery which pervaded New York at the beginning of the epidemic remains vivid. But for many New Yorkers and others today, this early period from 1981 to 1985 is virtually unknown. The activist movements that changed the nation’s approach to catastrophic disease have overshadowed the panic of this period when a new and fatal enemy to public health was in its earliest stages and no one knew how to combat it.
AIDS in New York: The First Five Years will explore the impact of the epidemic on personal lives, public health and medical practices, culture, and politics in New York City and the nation. Drawing from the archives of the New York Public Library, New York University, and the National Archive of LGBT History, the show will use posters, photographs, and artifacts to tell the story of the early years of AIDS in New York.
Generous support for this exhibition and its related educational programming has been provided, in part, by Ford Foundation, The New York Community Trust, and the Keith Haring Foundation.
Children With AIDS: Spirit and Memory
Photographs by Claire Yaffa
To accompany AIDS in New York: The First Five Years, the New-York Historical Society will curate a visual arts exhibition and gallery show, featuring twenty breathtaking black and white photographs by noted photographer and social realist Claire Yaffa from her collection “The Changing Face of Children with AIDS.”
Claire Yaffa, whose work has been featured in The New York Times and several other major publications, has worked for years to document an intensely intimate, behind-the-scenes look at medical institutions and their youngest patients, giving agency and voice to thousands of individuals—particularly children—struggling with life-threatening illnesses. Among the institutions that Yaffa has worked with during her long artistic career, the Incarnation Children’s Center in the Bronx—an organization that was one of the first to care for orphaned infants born with HIV—provided some of Yaffa’s most visceral subject matter, offering a stirring tribute to those affected by HIV/AIDS.
Beginning in 1990, Yaffa visited Incarnation Children’s Center and was permitted to document the lives of these afflicted children and adolescents over a period of ten years, creating haunting portraits that capture the pathos and beauty of dozens of HIV’s youngest victims—most of whom did not survive to adulthood—and documenting the extraordinary devotion of the children’s caretakers.
The exhibition will have a special focus on two or three individual children’s stories and will featuring several of Yaffa’s emotionally moving, mid- to large-format, black and white photographs, and revealing with clarity and humility the often heartbreaking tales of children afflicted with HIV and AIDS.
Image: A group advocating AIDS research marches down Fifth Avenue during the 14th annual Lesbian and Gay Pride parade in New York, June 27, 1983. Mario Suriani/Associated Press
Media contact:
Laura Washington / New-York Historical Society (212) 873-3400 x263 lwashington@nyhistory.org
Sarah Buffum / Arts & Communications Counselors (212) 715-1594 buffums@finnpartners.com
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (77th Street) New York, NY 10024
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Friday - 10am-8pm
Sunday - 11am-5pm
Monday closed