Call To Action
The AIDS Poster Archive wants your help in compiling a visual record of the HIV / AIDS –related posters and billboards that appear in locations around the world. Are you in your hometown or city? Are you traveling? Take a photo of any AIDS poster you see. Please make the photo clear enough so that we may read the message on it. Then take a second photo. Let this photo show us where the poster is on display. Is it in a clinic? A club? A bus shelter? Or is it simply posted among others on a wall?
Then send the photo to us via Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. We will compile the images and the information you provide.
Mission
Why are we collecting these images? Our inspiration is the AIDS Education Posters Collection http://aep.lib.rochester.edu/ that is part of the University of Rochester’s Rare Books and Special Collections. You will find images there of over 8,000 posters from 1982 to the present. We wish to expand on this collection by gathering online images of posters and billboards that you have seen and submitted to us. We like to say that these are posters in action: in the public’s view, informing people and convincing them to take action.
Posters are ephemeral; printed on paper and often tossed away or plastered over. However, they form a record of history. They are a snapshot of a time, place and perspective. Since AIDS posters are widely produced internationally, you can see in them the full range of responses to the crisis.
Submit your photos and you help us grow an online archive. Through this archive, we will observe trends in AIDS education messaging and graphic style. Help preserve this history.
The AIDS Poster Archive was created by Adrienne Klein at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
