Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - May 31, 2002
Photographer Gideon Mendel has spent nine years producing the material that has gone into his remarkable book A Broken Landscape (M&G Books), about people living with HIV/ Aids in Africa. It consists of many black-and-white photographs, accompanied by commentary provided by the subjects themselves.
Mendel says Aids is "one of the most important issues facing the world, and it's completely under-reported".
The book has been designed to be read rather than as a coffee-table glossy.
Mendel comments that, although he began taking the pictures as "a sort of traditional compassionate photojournalist" he soon realised that "the photographs alone weren't enough; they didn't work, the issues are so complicated, so difficult, so hidden".
Increasingly he uses text and testimony; recently an academic in the art world suggested that he is now less a photographer than an "activist conceptual artist".
Mendel explains that "producing the text involves a painstaking, slow process. I sit with people for a long time, getting them to tell the story they need to tell in as unmediated and unreported a way as possible."
The photographs are arranged in sequences, grouped around the story of the subject. The longest of these sequences, 17 photographs, is that of Mzokhona Malevu, from Enseleni Township in KwaZulu-Natal, showing him playing cards with his friends, being washed by his father, sleeping with seven children on the floor of his shack-room. It charts his life with HIV and ends with his funeral, which he wanted to be an "Aids education funeral, where the message can be spread far and wide". The close-up richness of everyday human dignity in the photographs is in itself a celebration of the lives of the many people photographed.
Mendel was raised in Johannesburg and studied African history and psychology at the University of Cape Town. He has worked as a photographer for 18 years and at the start of his career was very influenced by the political work of Omar Badsha and Paul Weinberg.
He acknowledges his debt to David Goldblatt who was an inspiration as well as tough critic; at a key moment in his career when he was working as a news photographer, Goldblatt encouraged him to exhibit at the Market Theatre Gallery and generously offered practical help. He says photography empowered him "to do something". Although he is now based in London, Mendel says his sojourn overseas has strengthened his work, and that though he sees himself now as a classical soutpiel, there is some advantage to being intimately acquainted with a place, yet seeing it from the outside.
His commitment to the production of the book "drove lots of people crazy". Asked whether he has not found it extremely harrowing and emotionally exhausting, he concedes the exhaustion, but adds, "I feel so privileged ... and in fact impatient with all the wingeing I've done."
The details
A Broken Landscape has been sponsored by Action Aid and the Canon Collins Educational Trust, and thus retails at only R120. Additional sponsorship from the Rockefeller Foundation is to go towards sending free copies to 500 individuals and organisations. The exhibition of A Broken Landscape opens at the Museum Africa in Newtown on June 2. It includes some of Mendel's recent colour work, which addresses current issues such as treatment access, mother-to-child transmission and HIV/Aids activism.
020531
MG020516
Copyright © 2002 - Daily Mail & Guardian. For information about the content or for permission to redistribute, publish or use for broadcast, contact the publisher.
AEGiS is a 501(c)3, not-for-profit, tax-exempt, educational corporation. AEGiS is made possible through unrestricted funding from Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Elton John AIDS Foundation, the National Library of Medicine, Pacific Life Foundation and donations from users like you.
Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2002. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.
AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is often presented in summary or aggregate form. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.
Copyright ©1980, 2002. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .