Positive Negatives - Democratic Republic of Congo (2000 - 2001)
Location: Africa and the Middle East, Democratic Republic of Congo
Keywords:
Project Background
Positive Negatives: Picturing Life with HIV/AIDS
Photographs by HIV+ women
Kinshasa, People’s Democratic Republic of Congo, 2000.
Partner Organisations: Christian Aid and Femmes Fondation Plus
“These women, for the most part rejected, scorned, ridiculed by those that know them, are now among the very few women photographers this country has. From now on they have more than just the means to earn a living, they have a tool which allows them to express their ideas and their feelings in an artistic way. In brief, they can now contribute to the reconstruction of this country, their country, by educating the population through images that they themselves have produced.”
Bernadette Mulelebwe
Director, Fondation Femme Plus
In 1997, the fall of the 30-year-long military dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko spawned hopes of a peaceful regime under incoming Laurent-Desire Kabila. Sadly, instead his rule hurried in fresh conflict which, supported by Ugandan and Rwandan forces, came in the form of a rebellion against Kabila’s government less than a year later. In defiance of a peace accord signed in 1999, fighting continues in the West African country, while the international community continues to shy from consigning significant peacekeeping troops.
The ongoing war with rebel forces has led to a haemorraging of government revenues. Schools, hospitals, roads and communication systems are decrepit; civil servants go unpaid for months at a time. The Congo is one of the world’s poorest countries: and that poverty is manifest at all levels of society. The vast majority can barely scrape together the basic necessities for survival. Healthcare, and health education, barely exists.
Nearly 1.5 million people, more than five percent of the adult population, in the war-torn republic is HIV-positive. Over half of these are women.
In June 2000, 15 HIV+ women, the members of local support group Femmes Foundation Plus (FFP), attended their first photography workshop in Kishasa. These women, in the main widows whose disease left them ostracised by their extended family but still responsible for the welfare of up to eight children each, grasped the opportunity to learn: they dealt pragmatically with the fact of their death, first taking the chance to build up personal picture albums to pass on to their children. Then, slowly, they turned the cameras in on their experience of HIV, exploring how their new skill could challenge the immense stigma attached to their disease, and how it could help them regain their own human dignity.