Life interrupted

An exhibition of photographs by Don McCullin about HIV and AIDS, County Hall Gallery, London; until 10 January 2005 (open Friday to Sunday only);admission free

Touring the United Kingdom and Ireland throughout 2005

See www.christian-aid.org.uk

Rating: ****

Words and figures are not enough to describe the misery that is caused by the AIDS pandemic. In his new exhibition, Life Interrupted, Don McCullin uses black and white photography to tell us the astounding stories of the people he has visited.

McCullin, a world renowned photojournalist, travelled to South Africa and Zambia in 2000 to document the lives of people living with HIV. Earlier this year, he returned to the same countries with Christian Aid, a UK and Irish development agency.

When trying to track down families he had met on his previous journey to Zambia, McCullin was devastated by his findings: most of the people he had seen last time had died.

Teresa was one of these. She died only three months after McCullin had taken her photograph, leaving behind two children, Aaron and Mavis. When McCullin met Aaron, now 14, he gave him his mother's photograph. At first, Aaron turned away, his face in his hands. But after his initial shock, his face became wreathed in smiles as he hugged the photo to his chest, McCullin recalls.

McCullin also visited a cemetery in Zambia. “Four years ago, there was a steady tempo of burials. Now there seems to be a crescendo,” he says. Andrew Banda, a local software engineer, adds: “The gravediggers have the most secure job in Zambia. It is a big, big business here.”

Unlike in Zambia, where HIV positive people have to pay £6 (€8.67; $11.65) a month to receive antiretroviral treatment, South Africa, which still has the highest number of HIV positive people in the world, now offers treatment free of charge.

Although only a small minority of people who would need treatment receive it, examples show how big a difference it makes. Nomalunga remembers the day Don McCullin photographed her four years ago: “I was so sick then, I thought I would die.” Having received antiretroviral therapy, she feels much healthier today. She now looks after other patients, including Andiswa, who says, “It is important to me that she is also HIV positive. She understands me. I remember when she was as sick as I am now.”

The power of Life Interrupted is that McCullin's photographs show us how humans affected by HIV live—how they cry and how they laugh, how they die and how they find new life. They show us that we are all humans and that we are all affected, whether infected or not. Christian Aid comments, “His [McCullin's] photographs do more than bear witness. They compel us to act.”