AIDS photo diary, 1986–1990 is an art work that comprises a photo diary that records the decline in health and eventual death of David Tosh, from AIDS from 1986 to 1990 in Sydney, Australia. The diary – with accompanying photographs taken by John Jenner – was created by Jenner to remember his friend and honour the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. Some of the images were featured in an article in Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend magazine, 13 October 1990, pp. 20–29.[1]
Contents
The work includes photographs by John Jenner from 1986 to 1990, together with a biography in the form of a play written by Jenner. The diary also includes poems by Willy Barber.[2]
Context
This diary was one of a number of artistic responses to HIV/AIDS in Australia at a time when medications that could prolong and enhance the quality of life of those living with HIV had not been developed.[3] David Tosh died on 3 May 1990 aged 30 years.[4][5] In 1990 Australia experienced 2381 cases of AIDS as reported by the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research.[6] 97% of these cases were male and the survival rate was only 40%.[7]
Australia’s experience of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 90s is thus ancient history, and so much of that time is gone: a time of the dead and the dying; vigil shifts at ward 17; watching brilliant and beautiful men sliding into garbled dementia; polite efforts to avoid funeral scheduling conflicts; two full pages of obits in the Sydney Star Observer; anger and love and screaming horror at the waste of so many lives.
^Davies, Peter; Aggleton, Peter; Hart, Graham (1992), AIDS : rights, risk, and reason, Falmer Press, ISBN978-0-7507-0039-9
^Ware, Cheryl (12 April 2019). HIV survivors in Sydney : memories of the epidemic. Cham, Switzerland. ISBN9783030051020. OCLC1097183579.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Dunne, Stephen (13 November 2006). "Holding the man". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 23 October 2012. Retrieved 24 July 2013.
