Identity elements
Name and location of repository
Level of description
Folder
Title
Archive of 31 South Florida press photographs regarding the AIDS crisis
Date(s)
- 1985-1993 (Creation)
Extent
Content and structure elements
Scope and content
"Miami: Miami Herald/Broward Weekender, 1985-1993. Archive of 31 black-and-white press photographs documenting the response to the AIDS crisis in Broward County, Florida, 1985-1993. All the photographs have captions, typed, attached, or annotated on the versos and or rectors, identifying many as from the Broward Weekender and the Miami Herald, 23 with date stamps, three with 'Return to Broward' stamps, and one with two 'Not used' stamps on the versos.
A diverse and somber archive documenting various aspects of the early impact of the HIVA/AIDS crisis as experienced by residents of Broward County, Florida, which includes patients, family and survivors, caregivers and healthcare workers, group homes and hospice care, and local and national activism, which as a whole, presents a rather thorough portrait of the healthcare crisis of the time.
Among the photographs in the archive are multiple images documenting early AIDS awareness and activism, including bicyclist Mark Landsfeld, astride his bike in 1985, having cycled from Anchorage, Alaska to Key West, Florida to raise money for AIDS research, and runner Daman Von Damico, seen training for a 100-mile run in 1987, also to raise money for AIDS research. Local activist Bob Kunst is pictured before a podium, with a 'Be Moral war on AIDS Not on Sex' placard to his left, speaking for 'Cure-Aids Now!' in 1987, and local author and activist Paul Sergios, is pictured in 1993, promoting his 1993 memoir, 'One Boy at War, My Life in the AIDS Underground.' Another photograph is a striking image from 1992 of a large group of African American parents and children marching down Sistrunk Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale in an AIDS Awareness Walk and Rally.
A turning point in the public's perception of the HIV/AIDS crisis is evidenced in a 1991 photograph, in which employees of a local Kentucky Fried Chicken, are seen signing an oversized card they created for Magic Johnson, weeks after Johnson's announcement of his diagnosis with HIV. Johnson's public announcement of his diagnosis, followed by his outspoken activism, greatly helped in de-stigmatizing the disease at the time. A caption on a 1986 photograph of an elderly mother reading to her adopted HIV positive daughter with Down Syndrome, however presents a heartbreaking example of the public's ignorance of the disease at the time, noting '[the mother] is trying to get Renee [the daughter] not to touch for fear of contracting AIDS.'
Other photographs document a public dental clinic specializing in AIDS patients in 1987, patients and staff at Our House, an AIDS hospice which was being closed for a violation of zoning regulations in 1987, and 1990 photographs of Victory House, which provided affordable housing to unemployed AIDS patients and closed in 1990 due to lack of funding." --Description from Royal Books.