On the Symbolism of Hand Portraits and Gesture in a Time of COVID and of HIV & AIDS

Several months ago, right before the beginning of the COVID pandemic, as it turns out, I started working on a new series of hand portraits and self-portraits. At the time, I had more of an activist purpose in mind for this particular body of work. Still do. But then Covid-19 happened, and it reshaped, ever so slightly, the overall purpose of my hand portrait series. Its working title is Talk with Your Hands – Gesture and Self-Expression: A Series of B&W Hand Portraits and Self-Portraits. (now, available here).

As part of this particular body of work, the “No Surrender” image itself has gone through its own transformation in terms of story, symbolism, and, hence, title.

Seen through the lens of coronavirus—and/or any chronic health conditions or diseases, such as HIV—the image speaks to the isolation and loneliness, to the despair and overwhelming hopelessness many of us feel when surrounded by this particular kind of darkness- defined by unknowns and uncertainties, insecurities, suffering, and death.

And yet, this kind of darkness is not something new, not to the long-term survivors of the AIDS pandemic. After all, the eighties are also known as “the dark years” of that pandemic.

Today, in a time of coronavirus, we can learn from the long-term AIDS survivors, and try our best not to surrender to today’s darkness, and claw our way through it and out of it.