cover image FOCUS ON LIVING: Portraits of Americans with HIV and AIDS

FOCUS ON LIVING: Portraits of Americans with HIV and AIDS

Roslyn Banish, . . Univ. of Massachusetts, $50 (288pp) ISBN 978-1-55849-395-7

Since 1997, San Francisco photographer Banish (City Families: Chicago and London) has been interviewing and photographing Americans who are living with HIV or AIDS; this book collects 40 of her portraits along with transcriptions of her subjects' first-person testimony. An introduction from Paul A. Volberding, professor and chair of medicine, University of California at San Francisco, points to "abuse, abandonment, hatred, and stigma," but also to the fact that "when people are confronted by disaster, major transformations can occur." Banish's unadorned portraits, often shot at her subjects' homes, are subtle and dignified, and the narratives have a lucid strength, even in despair. Some of Banish's subjects have died, a fact Banish reports with feeling but without sentiment. Others tell of how new drugs and other treatment have extended their lives; as Paula Peterson writes, "Now I feel like a full-fledged participant, and that means I fail or succeed in ways that are much like everybody else, that sometimes I'm good at living, and sometimes I'm not." The disease crosses all lines of race, class, gender and sexual orientation, and Banish takes care to include people from all walks of life, fostering an expanded sense of community and further breaking the silence and statistics that surround people living with HIV and AIDS. (May)