AIDS Photos Depict a Will to Survive

Rosalind Solomon’s photographs of people with AIDS confront the viewer with a greater verism than most media images have shown.

Assembled in the exhibit “Portraits in the Time of AIDS,” currently at UC San Diego’s Grove Gallery through Saturday, Solomon’s pictures show a young man raising his arms overhead to reveal the dark lesions covering his chest; another, lying in his hospital bed, breathing through an oxygen mask; a third, glaring at the camera with a mix of profound sadness and defiant anger.

“One of the things that has always been of concern to me is the fact that we are unwilling to accept death as a part of life,” Solomon said. “As a culture, we’ve been taught that death doesn’t exist, that we’re supposed to be youthful forever--to live forever.”

Solomon’s images definitely embrace mortality. Yet, the New York-based photographer, many of whose past subjects have been Third World peoples living in appalling poverty, always strives to portray her subjects with compassion and as survivors, not defeated souls.

As she writes in the exhibit catalogue: “In this series of pictures, my goal was to reveal a special character, a relationship, an environment, aspects of the human struggle to survive.”

Solomon, who came to know those depicted in the 52-piece exhibit at weekly dinners for people with AIDS at a church in New York, said their attitudes, most of the time, were positive. Though conversation at these dinners included talk of doctors, medication and treatment, the tone and the words, were about life.

“I haven’t had any contact with groups of people with terminal illness, but I think the kind of support that exists within the community of people who have AIDS is remarkable,” she said. “And the kind of positive attitudes toward life were quite a revelation to me. Of course, not everybody had that kind of approach.”