ABSTRACT
Through Positive Eyes is a photo-storytelling project co-created by the photographer Gideon Mendel and the University of California, Los Angeles, Art & Global Health Center. The unique feature of the project is that it emanates directly from the creativity of people living with HIV and AIDS in a dozen major cities around the world, thus embodying their “positive” perspectives on the world. In addition to tracing the history of the project and describing its methods, this essay argues that the effectiveness of Through Positive Eyes photo-stories is tied to the processes of identification that are central to film theory, specifically that the photo-stories meaningfully embody the “face-to-face encounter” theorized by Franco-Lithuanian philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. This insight has major implications for public health and arts activism together, drawing on the entanglements one human being has with another in order to shift the stigma associated with HIV and AIDS.
