Synopsis
More than 900,000 Americans are now living with the HIV virus. Although thousands of them die each year, advances in medical treatment have allowed many people to control the infection and survive longer. But what are their lives like? This book combines superb photographs and compelling first-person accounts to document the feelings and experiences of a wide range of Americans who are carrying the HIV virus. In these pages, men and women speak candidly about their lives, their relationships, and how they have come to terms with the presence of this chronic and potentially deadly disease. The forty people in the book come from a diverse array of geographic, economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. They are young and old, gay, straight, bisexual, and transgender. Some have unexpectedly extended their lives and gone back to work, thanks to protease inhibitors and other new drugs. Others worry about the side effects of the medicines and struggle tomaintain their health. What becomes clear in these interviews is that HIV is everybody's disease -- it knows no boundaries. Yet there are some in our society who still prefer to blame the afflicted rather than embrace them. By allowing HIV-positive people to speak openly and movingly about their lives, Focus on Living seeks to remove the curtain of invisibility that still cloaks the disease and to reduce the stigma that contributes to silence.
Publishers Weekly
Since 1997, San Francisco photographer Banish (City Families: Chicago and London) has been interviewing and photographing Americans who are living with HIV or AIDS; this book collects 40 of her portraits along with transcriptions of her subjects' first-person testimony. An introduction from Paul A. Volberding, professor and chair of medicine, University of California at San Francisco, points to "abuse, abandonment, hatred, and stigma," but also to the fact that "when people are confronted by disaster, major transformations can occur." Banish's unadorned portraits, often shot at her subjects' homes, are subtle and dignified, and the narratives have a lucid strength, even in despair. Some of Banish's subjects have died, a fact Banish reports with feeling but without sentiment. Others tell of how new drugs and other treatment have extended their lives; as Paula Peterson writes, "Now I feel like a full-fledged participant, and that means I fail or succeed in ways that are much like everybody else, that sometimes I'm good at living, and sometimes I'm not." The disease crosses all lines of race, class, gender and sexual orientation, and Banish takes care to include people from all walks of life, fostering an expanded sense of community and further breaking the silence and statistics that surround people living with HIV and AIDS. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.