At an army base in Luanda, Angolan soldiers train to teach others how to defend themselves against H.I.V. (Joao Silva for The New York Times), 24 November 2002.

The Securitization of HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is a recent arrival in our lives, being an object of medical knowledge for only thirty years. Since the late 1990s, there has arisen a new mode of understanding – that HIV/AIDS constitutes a global security threat.

Cast as either a large-scale war or global emergency, the securitization of HIV/AIDS renders the virus as an aggressor and calls on global actors to fight against it. This poses a number of problems for photography. Should photographic practice address the broad construction of HIV/AIDS as a security threat, in which all aspects of international peace are at risk, or a narrow construction in which the focus is on the implications for the military? And how can photographs, which generally record the ‘here and now’, connect to the understanding of HIV/AIDS as a ‘long wave’ event spanning human generations?

For an extended discussion of these issues, read Section 1 of the report.