PHOTOGRAPHY: Transmission

HIV/AIDS in India

The issue of HIV in India is one that I wanted to make a statement about through my photography in as much as the population of 1 billion it is widely believed that India is a timebomb waiting to happen.It is the Transmission routes that are central to the epidemic in India. The pictures themselves are made up of portraits of sexworkers both women and Hijras ( transexuals) taken in a studio enviroment and not in a brothel, I did this for the the simple fact I want to isolate the women visually in a direct way, to speak about HIV. Also Mary Ellen Marks "Falkland Road" is a seminal body of work, for me it was to move away from that body of work and not repeating her beautiful yet haunting set.

I have shot an interior of an empty brothel room which speaks volumes of the enviroment and the emotional space it inhabits in regards to the virus. Pictures of places of transmission, for example the truck stops, Landscapes of old ruins of a cotton mill in Mumbai, a Dhaba ( service station on the highways into the cities where truckers buy sex) , other photographs show the use of condoms scattered at these truckstops in the hope of bringing awareness, the new highways coming into Mumbai with the concrete structures shot at night to represent the insidious nature of the virus into the metropolis.

The journey then goes into the rural villages of Maharasta where the infection is taken by migrants after returning from out of state jobs, the cycle of infection to the wives and families left behind and then a new transmission starts again as the virus is transmitted to new partners.

The photographs are a way of breaking past visual cliches and more importantly a way to photograph past the taboos and stigma of HIV in India which is very prevalent.