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A Positive View:
Images of HIV and AIDS in South Africa

Volunteer peer educators from the Joint Oxfam HIV/AIDS Program's partner, the Centre for Positive Care, express messages about HIV and AIDS through song and dance
Volunteer peer educators from the Joint Oxfam HIV/AIDS Program's partner, the Centre for Positive Care, express messages about HIV and AIDS through song and dance. The peer educators also dramatise messages about HIV and AIDS through role plays and hand out condoms to their audiences.
Photo: Matthew Willman/OxfamAUS.

A Positive View is a photographic collection of 40 images that showcases the work of Oxfam Australia's community-based partners in South Africa in responding to HIV and AIDS. The photos have been taken by renowned South African photographers Matthew Willman and Paul Weinberg.

These powerful, emotive images depict the lives of people living with HIV and affected by AIDS and their strength and resilience in responding to the daily challenges of the epidemic and of poverty.

The collection toured Australia for four weeks in November and December 2005, coinciding with AIDS Awareness Week and World AIDS Day. Touring with the collection were photographer Matthew Willman and Thabisile Khoza, a young HIV Positive South African woman working with Oxfam Australia in Durban, South Africa.

Thabisile shared her first-hand experience of our partners and program work and talked about the challenges of HIV and AIDS in South Africa, placing the images in context.

Exhibit A Positive View in your local community

A Positive View is available to Australian Oxfam groups to exhibit in their local communities so that the collection can continue to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS.

If you would like to find out more about exhibiting A Positive View, please contact Charlotte Sterrett.

A nurse from a mobile health clinic in the Southern Drakensburg region of South Africa administers treatment to patients from the surrounding rural area, who may have waited hours to be attended to
A nurse from a mobile health clinic in the Southern Drakensburg region of South Africa administers treatment to patients from the surrounding rural area, who may have waited hours to be attended to. Such mobile clinics are the only medical treatment centres available to many rural communities.
Photo: Matthew Willman/OxfamAUS.

About the photographers

Matthew Willman

Matthew Willman is one of South Africa's foremost photographers in documentary and photo essay.

Matthew has the privilege of working with Mr Nelson Mandela and is the only commissioned photographer to have been asked to work on the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg.

Matthew has also worked with and photographed some of the world's most well known personalities including the President of South Africa, Mr Thabo Mbeki, the Dalai Llama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, David Beckham, Richard Branson, ex presidents of South Africa Mr FW De Klerk and Mr PW Botha, and former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Paul Weinberg

Paul Weinberg is a South African-born photojournalist and documentary photographer whose work explores the people, life, culture and environment around him.

Paul was a founding member of Afrapix photographic agency which was well known for its uncompromising stand and visual portrayal of the apartheid system and the resistance to it.

Paul has been involved in numerous exhibitions and projects in South Africa and internationally reflecting human rights issues, the environment, development and indigenous people. His photographs have appeared in international publications including Der Spiegel, New York Times, Red, The Independent (London) and Elsivier.