These heartbreaking and incredibly moving images show the affection and love shown during the height of the Aids crisis. Photographer Gideon Mendel’s project The Ward began in 1993 when he spent a number of weeks on the Charles Bell wards in London’s Middlesex Hospital. All the patients on the ward were dying with the knowledge that there was no cure for the disease. During this time antiretroviral medications were not available and patients on the ward faced the prospect of an early death.
Through challenging camera angles Menno Aden abstracts most familiar actual living environments and public interiors into flattened two-dimensional scale models. A camera that the artist installed on the ceiling of various rooms takes pictures downwards of the interiors. The resulting images lay out space in symmetrical compositions that look like assemblages stripped off any kind of objectivity. The views into private homes and secret retreats bring up associations of the ubiquitous observation camera. The notion of surveillance is systematically played out by the artist to hint at society’s voyeuristic urge that popular culture has made mainstream.
