A broken land: images of AIDS in Africa

Abstract

The population of Africa is now facing a threat greater than famine or war, which has claimed more lives than the plague. Yet to date, the grassroots experiences of the people who have HIV infection and AIDS have been underreported. The statistics are familiar—some 25 million people affected in central and southern Africa—but we remain largely ignorant of the devastating effect of the epidemic on individuals and communities. The South African photographer Gideon Mendel has spent the past 8 years trying to raise awareness of the situation, both in Africa itself and in western countries. His moving and honest collection of pictures, entitled A Broken Landscape, is an extraordinary collection of images.