Parsons School of Design MFA Photography program theses ➔ 2016 (PC020403.12) ➔ Gestures in a Time of an Epidemic & Body Bags

Thesis

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Related people/organizations

Parsons School of Design. Photography Department. (sponsoring body)
Ursula Meyer (photographer)

Date

August 8 2016

Description

Gestures in a Time of an Epidemic
Having acquired expired film from 1985, which happens to be the year of my birth, I started to think about the death of the film as well as what events during that year that impacted the LGBT community. 1985 really became the realization that HIV/AIDS was an epidemic. “By the end of 1985, every region in the world had reported at least one case of AIDS, with 20,303 cases in total.”
Although I did not experience the height of the disease as an adult, it still feels as though an ominous shadow of it lurks over the LGBT community today. HIV is still not fully discussed openly and remains incredibly stigmatized. By appropriating gestures from photographs of openly gay artists and activists that passed away from AIDS, the goal of my piece was to revisit the epidemic through loss and to restart a conversation that is often lost on my generation of LGBT individuals.

Body Bags:
Having acquired expired film from 1985, which happens to be the year of my birth, I started to think about the death of the film as well as what events during that year that impacted the LGBT community. 1985 really became the realization that HIV/AIDS was an epidemic. “By the end of 1985, every region in the world had reported at least one case of AIDS, with 20,303 cases in total.”
Although I did not experience the height of the disease as an adult, it still feels as though an ominous shadow of it lurks over the LGBT community today. HIV is still not fully discussed openly and remains incredibly stigmatized. By appropriating gestures from photographs of openly gay artists and activists that passed away from AIDS, the goal of my piece was to revisit the epidemic through loss and to restart a conversation that is often lost on my generation of LGBT individuals. 

Identifier

PC020403_2016_Meyek190

Use Restrictions

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ 

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