Triumph of Hope

Photographer Harvey Stein lends a human face to the AIDS epidemic.

By: Daniel Shearer

Photo by Harvey Stein

   Seen through the lens of photographer Harvey Stein, the faces of AIDS are not gaunt. They are not the faces of people withering away in hospital beds, not people who have succumbed to despair.
   They are, in fact, ordinary people, a notion that still seems remarkable, even after years of efforts to push aside bigotry and prejudice.
   Working during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, Mr. Stein spent several years shooting portraits at Gay Men’s Health Crisis in Manhattan, the world’s first AIDS service organization and still one of the largest of its kind. The images are part of a traveling exhibit — sponsored in-part by the George Eastman House, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts — on view at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pa., Nov. 4 through Dec. 16.
   "People have said to me, ‘Isn’t it depressing?’," says Mr. Stein. "I say ‘No. It’s the most uplifting project I’ve ever worked on in my photographic career.’
   "People with AIDS are shuttled aside usually. They’re marginalized, and I’m trying to put a spotlight on them, so it’s not depressing at all. And when you wake up and say, ‘Oh, my nail hurts,’ or ‘I have a cold, I’m miserable,’ and then you think about these people, you are thankful for your good health."
   Viewers encounter 60 black-and-white studio portraits, men and women, children and families, all of them photographed with a medium-format camera at GMHC’s offices in New York, at the time located on West 20th Street. Mr. Stein became involved in the project after responding to an ad placed by the organization.
   He currently teaches at Drew University, the International Center of Photography and the New School University, and has three published photography books, including Coney Island, released in 1998. His images have appeared in Time, Life, Glamour, Forbes, Art News, Esquire, The New Yorker and dozens of other publications.
   "I was one of maybe 70 people that answered that call," says Mr. Stein, who lives in Manhattan. "I volunteered my services to do that. I did it for about four and a half, five years, and I was one of I think two people to do it for that long. Some people did it for a week, some people did it for a month or a year. I stuck it out because I found it very fascinating and interesting.

From Faces of AIDS: Photographs by Harvey Stein: above left, Jimmy Searles and his 4-year-old son, Jimmy; at right, Jessica DePalo, 4; below left, Diana Coleman holding 9-month-old Carlos, with Queenika, 2, Tiana, 4, and Leticia, 5.		Photo by Harvey Stein

   "I photographed about 120 individuals. Not all were people from GMHC, but most were. I didn’t want a background, so I put up a dark cloth. I wanted to show only the subject, the person. I didn’t want any distractions, so we’re forced to look at them, that there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to escape."
   Each individual also completed a statement, which Mr. Stein used in accompanying wall texts. Instead of a nameless portrait, the father and child in OshKosh overalls becomes Jimmy Searles, electrical foreman, age 38, and Jimmy Searles Jr. (HIV negative), age 4.
   "I like to use words with photographs," Mr. Stein says, "because I think it enlarges the experience. It’s totally moving."
   The photograph of Diana Coleman, a 35-year-old nurse’s aid, tells a different story. With her are four children, 9-month-old Carlos (HIV positive), Queenika, 2 (HIV positive), Tiana, 4 (HIV negative), and Leticia, 5 (HIV negative), all dressed in traditional African garb made by Ms. Coleman. In 1993, at the time the photograph was taken, roughly one quarter of HIV positive mothers gave birth to HIV positive children. Since then, a number of studies have shown prenatal drug therapy can drastically reduce mother to infant transmission rates.
   "No one knows why AIDS is passed from mother to child, or why one child will get it and not another, but they can control it much more," Mr. Stein says. "There’s been a lot of progress with AIDS, there’s no question about that.
   "In 1993, (in the United States) there were more AIDS deaths than we’ve ever had, and in 1994, more AIDS cases. It peaked those two years, and then it has dropped because of new drugs, but we didn’t know that at the time. Now it’s more manageable."

Photo by Harvey Stein

   The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta currently estimates that between 800,000 and 900,000 people in the United State have HIV/AIDS, with approximately 40,000 new infections occurring in the U.S. each year. World wide, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS estimates 40 million people have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to the UNAIDS Barcelona Report released in July 2002. Beyond the numbers, Mr. Stein intended to give a human face to the epidemic.
   "One of my themes was that there’s life beyond AIDS," Mr. Stein says. "The people I met were dignified, certainly not proud, but they were not hiding. They wanted to be part of this project."
   Mr. Stein released two previous portraiture books, Parallels: A Look at Twins (1978) and Artists Observed (1986), which consisted of photographs and interviews with 85 artists. A Pittsburgh native, he earned an engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University, then worked for Bethlehem Steel in Bethlehem and later moved to New York, where he completed a master’s in business at Columbia. He did advertising work for several years and started taking photography classes, eventually leaving advertising for a full-time photography job as a studio assistant making $35 a week — a pittance, even in 1970. After a year, he went out on his own, assembling a portfolio, searching for assignments and selling stock photos to major publishers. He also has been a photography teacher since 1976, but portraiture remains his first love.
   "I’m looking for a certain engagement," he says. "I look for a good environment and an interesting person, good lighting. I’m not interested in expression, particularly. I would rather them not smile, a certain serious look, an involved look. Usually I’m eye to eye, and they’re looking at the camera. That involves me, and it draws the viewer in."
   In the years since he completed Faces of AIDS, the project has become a memorial of sorts. Keeping in touch with the organization where he did the work, Mr. Stein learned half of the people he photographed had died, until he lost track in the late ’90s.
   "Everyone, all these people, thought that they would not die," Mr. Stein says, "that they would beat it. So there was an upbeat and positive attitude, and it was amazing, just amazing."
Faces of AIDS: Photographs by Harvey Stein will be on view at the Bucks County Community College Hicks Art Center Gallery, 275 Swamp Road, Newtown, Pa., Nov. 4-Dec. 16. Mr. Stein will deliver a presentation about his work in Penn Hall, room 257, Nov. 20, 4-5 p.m., and a gallery talk Nov. 20, 6 p.m. Reception Nov. 20, 5-7 p.m. Gallery hours: Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Tues.-Thurs. 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat. 9 a.m.-noon. Closed Nov. 27-Dec. 1. For information, call (215) 504-8531. On the Web: www.bucks.edu/gallery