Artist Talk with Sal Lopes

In Living with AIDS, photographer Sal Lopes explores how the city of Boston was affected by the AIDS Crisis. From 1988 to 1992, Lopes traced three interconnected stories— the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt and its display in both Boston and Washington D.C.; the Buddy Program, run by the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, which offered volunteer support to those living with AIDS; and the Boyce family, whose adopted child Brianna was living with AIDS.

After spending the 1980s documenting Vietnam War veterans and the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., Lopes was touched by the grief and mourning of those who had lost their lives or loved ones to AIDS. He began his documentation first with the AIDS quilt. Assembled by the NAMES Project, each of the quilt’s individual squares commemorated a single life lost, offering loved ones the space to honor those who had passed, express their grief, and come together.

The photographs made of the quilt in Boston are especially poignant as they are situated a short distance from where this gallery would come to stand on Arlington St. Other landmarks in the images—the Saunders castle, Our Lady of Victories Church, and the Park Plaza—allow one to visualize how close this history really is and how profoundly our community was affected by it.

Another way Bostonians came together in this time was with the Buddy Program. The initiative provided intensive training for volunteers to offer long-term support and empathy once assigned to a ‘buddy’ living with AIDS. Lopes was accepted into the buddy training program, and the experience earned him the trust and respect within the community needed for the project. The images from this portion of the project reveal the different relationships between buddies; some grew into love, important friendships, and, for many, loss.

Lopes’s images of the Boyce family follow a similar suit. Parents John and Sharon Boyce adopted four children, Brian and Felicia who were living with HIV antibodies, their sister Brianna who had AIDS, and their brother Jeremy. Often, these images show mundane moments that could be shared by any family, such as Brianna playing with her siblings or caring for her pet bird. Others reveal Brianna’s bravery and the reality of her condition: Medic*tion being administered, cleaning her catheter, an IV being placed. Yet despite their situation, all the images contain an unyielding sense of love, from both the Boyce’s within the frame and Lopes through his lens.

This exhibition allows us to reflect on this moment in American history and to not only honor those whose lives were lost during the epidemic, but to also uplift those living with AIDS today.

Sal Lopes is a renowned photographer and platinum printer who has exhibited across the United States and abroad. He has nearly 250 images in museum collections including: the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Chrysler Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Musée de L’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland.

His photographs have appeared in publications ranging from Newsweek and National Geographic to French PHOTO, Black & White Magazine and Shutterbug. Larger bodies of work have been published in the books The Wall: Images and Offerings from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, published by Harper/Collins, and Living with AIDS: A Photographic Journal, published by Little Brown.

Noted photographers, museums, and galleries, have trusted Lopes with their platinum and silver printing projects. These clients include: Horst P. Horst, Herb Ritts, Mary Ellen Mark, Edward Weston Estate, Paul Strand Estate, Aperture, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ruth Bernhard, Robert Rauschenberg, Phil Trager, Keith Carter, Judy Dater, George Platt Lynes, Peter Lindbergh, Anderson and Low, Carrie Mae Weems, and many others.

He currently lives in Jamaica Plain, MA.

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