Iconic Sunday: Two Images of AIDS

Ken Meeks by Alon Reininger, 1986

Today, June 5, marks what public health historians consider the 30^th anniversary of HIV/AIDS. As this absorbing piece from Wired explans, it was on June 5, 1981 that the first bulletin describing a case of HIV was published in any medical journal.

In the years that followed, HIV/AIDS came to be called “the gay disease” and was largely overlooked by the public. Rock Hudson’s death in 1985 put a famous face to the disease. A year later, Life magazine published a picture by Contact Press Images photographer Alon Reininger that presented HIV/AIDS in an entirely new way. No one could think dismiss the disease, the pain it caused, and the threat it represented any longer.

Reininger, who had covered the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and political unrest around the world, learned about HIV/AIDS through his acquaintance with playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer. “When 50 or 80 people started to [die], it became apparent that something was going on. [Kramer and I] spoke about it, and then tried to figure out how I would climb into it,” Reininger told Photo District News a few years ago. Research led Reininger to an AIDS patient named Ken Meeks, whom he photographed. Three days later, Meeks died.

One of photos Reininger got that day showed Meeks bent into a wheelchair, stick thin, his arm spotted with blood-colored lesions. But it is Meeks’s face, his eyes in particular, that gives the image meaning. The eyes, to me at least, cry out. They want to be heard. They want to tell a story that until 1986 had been ignored.

David Kirby's death, by Therese Frare, 1990

In 1990, Life published another photo that captured the human cost of HIV/AIDS. Taken by a journalism graduate student named Therese Frare, it showed a dying young man, David Kirby, surrounded by his family. The image became another icon of the disease, and, later, a controversial one when it was used in an advertisement for United Colors of Benetton created by the editor Tibor Kalman. Some AIDS activists decried the commercial use of the image, while other groups were concerned the ad marked a mainstreaming of homosexuality. Such is the ambiguous nature of photography. Life later included Frare's image as one of the 100 photographs that changed the world.

Photos of the Week: Obama's Mojo vs. Palin's Mojo and more

The complete weekly photo review is up today on Le Lettre de la Photographie. Here's the sampling:

1. Painterly Photo

The great Frans Lanting has been astounding us with nature and landscape imagery for years, but this photograph, taken at the Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia, goes beyond astounding, all the way to astonishing. The photo, which appears in the June issue of National Geographic, is indeed a photo, its painterly effect coming from lighting conditions at dawn: Lanting explained: “The warm light of the morning sun was illuminating a huge red sand dune dotted with white grasses while the white floor of the clay pan was still in shade. It looks blue because it reflects the color of the sky above.” This might be the nature photo of the year.

 2. Tornado Alley

In the week after the a killer tornado his Joplin, Missouri, residents began picking up the pieces of their lives and recalling the terror of May 22. Photographer Edward Keating, shooting for Time magazine, photographed Ed Boyd and his wife Kathy standing near the closet they hid in when the storm destroyed their house.

3. Clash

In Somalia, clashes continued this week between Somali soldiers supported by the African Union and Islamist fighters—though “clash” seems too weak a word, in light of this image of a Somali soldier standing over the body of a man believed to be one of the Islamists.The photo was taken by Mustafa Abdi/AFP

 4. Obama's Mojo

Visually, if not politically, it has been a very good month for President Barack Obama. There was now-iconic "Situation Room" photo showing him in command as a Navy Seal team killed Osama bin Laden, then came a successful four-nation European trip, during which Obama was photographed performing in a variety of presidential roles. Meeting with with Briton's Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, and his new wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Obama was the Glambassador-in-Chief. Meeting with  world leaders at a G8 Summit in France, he was the dynamic Chief Executive. This photo, which shows Obama at Paris’s Orly airport on May 27, was shot by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images. Two days later Obama would be photographed with his arms around survivors of the Joplin tornado, fulfilling his duty as Comforter-in-Chief.

5. Palin's Mojo

On May 30, the president was performing his duty as the Commander-in-Chief, laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin, who may be inching closer to declaring herself a candidate for president, launched an East Coast bus tour at the Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally in Washington, D.C. “I love that smell of emissions,” she told FOX News.Who needs Air Force One as a backdrop of power when you can wear a Harley helmet? This photo was taken by Damon Winter for the New York Times.

Turning Points: William Albert Allard, Part 2

Yesterday I posted the first part of a recent interview with National Geographic's William Albert Allard. There, he told of an inspiring meeting with Dennis Stock, the famed Magnum photographer, that proved to be a turning point in his early career. Today he tells the story of how he became a summer intern at National Geographic and the assignment that changed his life--and the look of the magazine.

Part 2: Among the Amish

Allard shooting his first National Geographic assignment, Lancaster, PA, 1964

I went back to Minnesota and finished my senior year. In the spring of my senior year I went back to New York. I got an appointment to see John Morris at the New York Times, and I saw Howard Chapnick at the Black Star agency. They were all encouraging. Then I saw Betty Leavitt at Look—I think Arthur Rothstein had left by then—and she sent me to Yoichi Okamoto, who was then director of photography for the U.S. Information Agency in Washington, D.C. He would of course go on to become the first official White House photographer under President Johnson.

So I went to Washington and asked if Mr. Okamoto would look at my pictures. And yes, he would. I remember him sitting there with his glasses perched up on the top of this head, and his sleeves rolled up, and he looked at the pictures and picked up the phone and called Robert Gilka, the director of photography at National Geographic.

I later wrote down on an envelope the half of the conversation I could overhear. Okamoto saying to him, “You want to see a good people photographer? … Well God damm it I wouldn’t send him if he wasn’t any good … Tomorrow 1:00? Okay, let’s have lunch sometime ….”

And that phone call pretty much changed my life.

Turning Points Series: William Albert Allard

"Lone Rider, Texas, 1974"

I thought I would launch an irregular series of posts focused on turning points in the careers of major photographers. Maybe it’s the storytelling part of me—I’m always fascinated by narrative moments when fate steps in to take a hand, changing everything that follows. The form of this series may vary from post to post—interviews, Q&As, or, as in the case of this one, I might sometimes just step back and let the photographers tell their own stories.

   

William Albert Alard

It’s really the only way to go with someone like William Albert Allard, one of photography’s great storytellers. Allard has been a mainstay of National Geographic for more than 40 years, producing some 40 magazine articles and a number of books, the latest of which, a retrospective, is called William Albert Allard: Five Decades. It’s a heartfelt look back at an astonishing number of career high points and photographic destinations—from the American West to Sicily, from the Basque country to the film sets of Bollywood, from Hutterite colonies in Montana to minor league baseball diamonds in Arizona. “In a way, the stories are always about subcultures,” he told me recently. “That’s what I’m interested in.” While the far-flung landscapes form the backdrop for his work, it’s the people in his images that are the real focus—etched as compelling characters within frames that are filled with profound atmosphere.

Allard’s storytelling is not limited to pictures—he’s also written for Geographic, and he contributed some 55,000 words of text to his Five Decades book. “I wanted to be a writer before I became a photographer,” he says. “Writing is harder—good writing. You look at a picture and you either say, ‘Goddamnit, that’s nice,’ or it’s not, whereas with writing you think, “Will what I have to say mean anything to anybody? Why should they listen to this?’”

Here, Allard tells how he became a photographer—or, more precisely, how two events led him to become a professional: The first involved a famous photographer from the Magnum agency, who for no apparent good reason spent a couple of hours changing a young man’s life. The second, which I'll post later, involved a storied assignment that helped change the look and outlook of one of the world’s great photo magazines. As you’ll see, fate did indeed step in to alter Allard’s life—after he gave fate a little kick in the pants.

Iconic Tuesday: Swimsuits We Remember

Everyone once in a while you're reading something on the Web and you go, "Whoa, I'm probably thinking about this too much." Huffington Post readers may have caught themselves doing that while flipping through this list of the "Most Iconic Swimsuits" of all time. At any rate, the list was not bad...with the exception of a couple of WTF entries. Here's a quick overview as the culture of summer gets underway.

1979: Bo Derek in 10

No argument here. She rocked the one-piece at the dawn of the Reagan era. Only director Blake Edwards could turn a corn-rowed run down the beach into moment of arch comedy and pathos. 

1976: Farrah Fawcett Poster

The impact of this image cannot be underestimated. Shot by photographer Bruce McBroom on afternoon in Farrah Fawcett's backyard, it help create the giant photo poster industry of the 1970s.  Now the poster hangs in the Smithsonian. The shot happened when Farrah decided to cool off with a water hose.

1959: Elizabeth Taylor in "Suddenly Last Summer"

You would have to be lobotomized not to have this image stored in you summer memory bank.

1966: Raquel Welch in "One Million Years B.C."

 

Finally, a bikini--made of fur. This one has double-icon status--instantly identifiable to young boys coming of age in the mid-sixties, and to their offspring who saw it on the poster that hid Andy Dufresne's escape route in The Shawshank Redemption.

1962: Ursula Andress in "Dr. No"

The greatest bikini swimsuit to ever appear in a movie and/or photo? The answer is yes.

A View from Inside the Rapture

A father and his son, members of Harold Camping's church, by Brandon Tauszik

When prophet of doom Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on May 21, most of us laughed. Brandon Tauszik got a scoop. Tauszik, who owns a video production company in Oakland, California, not far from the headquarters of Camping’s Family Radio organization, says he was intrigued, “as a Christian,” by the Camping-sponsored end-times billboards he saw around town. He began attending Camping’s weekly sermons and the people (“Predominately white, 50 years and up") who showed up at his church. He was welcomed warmly and allowed to take pictures, giving him an insider's view of the end of the world.  On May 21, when earthquakes were supposed to herald the Rapture, Tauszek went to Camping’s home. “The car was gone,” he says. The next morning, when it was clear that the Rapture had been put on hold, Tauszik photographed a bewildred-looking Camping at his front door. Later he went to Camping’s church and photographed the followers who’d gathered there. One guy, Louie, expressed his deep disappointment that the end had not come. “Now I have to go back to New York,” he said. Here are some of the images.

Camping speaking to his congregation 

Literature produced by Camping's Family Radio organization

Camping after the Rapture failed to manifest itself

Disappointed Camping follower Louie: “Now I have to go back to New York,” he said.

 

Photos of the Week: Epic Kardashian...Gaga Gone Wild...Divine Oprah...Law & Order, New York...and more

My full weekly review is up at Le Lettre de la Photographie. Herewith, the sampling:

1. The Stumble

Earlier this week, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and possible French presidential candidate, was arrested on sex charges in New York and ritualistically led past news photographers in what is known as a Perp Walk. As theater, the Perp Walk is only the first chapter of a visual story that often ends on courthouse steps following a trial. The crime-and-punishment tale of Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, came to a climax came this week when he was found guilty of 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy charges in federal court in Manhattan, concluding the biggest insider-trading case in a generation. Photographers snapped him stumbling over a curb as he left the courthouse, providing a visual denouement. Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters

 2. Action Sequence

What looks like a still from a Michael Bay action movie is in fact the real-life scene at the main fuel depot in Misrata, Libya, aflame after being bombed by the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qadaffi on May 7. Photo from AFP/Getty Images
 
 3. Gaga as You've Never Seen Her

Every photo story about Lady Gaga could properly be titled, “Lady Gaga As You’ve Never Seen Her.” For i-D magazine’s summer “Hedonism Issue,” superstar fine-art photographer Wolfgang Tillmans photographed Gaga looking entirely normal, which may be her most shockingly original persona yet.

4. Faces in the News

Photographer Brian Prahl snapped Kim Kardashian vacationing in Mexico earlier this month with her boyfriend, pro basketball player Kris Humphries. The images spread rapidly across the Internet, prompting In Touch magazine to report rumors that Kim’s “larger-than-ever-backside” is the result of a “super-sized butt implant.” That is celebrity news of colossal proportions. Photo by Brian Prahl/Splash News

5. Cover Stories

The Barnes & Noble bookstore chain reported refused to display the current issue of Dossier Journal, an art-and-fashion magazine, deeming Collier Schorr's cover photo of androgynous male model Andej Pejic to be offensive. The retailer demanded that the magazine be body-bagged in black opaque plastic, thus ensuring Dossier-Journal's place in the history of media censorship.

Meanwhile, media news of considerably more consequence was marked by O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine. This spring Oprah is ending her long-running TV show, an event that demanded special treatment from Oprah's magazine (which thankfully will remain to supply the world with joy, laughs, lessons, and adventure). The entire June issue is devoted to looking back at the show's great moments,and there have been many. In Rob Howard's cover photo, however, Oprah herself seems to look up toward a future that promises to be divine.