Living with AIDS | Sal Lopes - Vernissage

On Thursday, June 4th from 6-8PM, join the Leica Gallery Boston in celebrating the opening of Living with AIDS, an important and beautiful body of work from local photographer Sal Lopes.

In Living with AIDS, 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, then turned his lens to community efforts like the Buddy Program, and familial relationships with the Boyce's.

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. Learn more about Lopes here.

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