Positive responses to HIV Cambodia 2001

In 1993, my agency Network began a project to document responses to HIV with an exhibition and a book. This was developed into Positive Lives, a project with The Terrence Higgins Trust to photograph the impact of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, illuminating positive human responses to the crisis. I spent a month in Cambodia photographing support group volunteers, sex workers, orphans, widows and collecting their stories: the key drivers of the pandemic were pov- erty, gender inequality, injustice and stigma. Women were disproportionately affected by all these factors: married men – over a third of whom are HIV positive – regularly visit sex workers and often carry the virus back to their familly. The international touring Positive Lives show’s goal is to reach the people excluded or rejected from mainstream for reasons of ethnicity, sexuality or class and is constantly touring world-wide and is annually expanded by new work.