AIDS in Two Cities

Port au Prince, Haiti and Vancouver, Canada

Documenting grassroots leadership and the community response to HIV/AIDS in one of the richest cities in the world and in one of the poorest.

The photo-based collaboration with Panos Caribbean and Panos Canada involved partnering with 24 NGOs in both locations and led to the creation of the Vancouver Initiative (2006-2010) — an effort to re-energize the community response to HIV/AIDS by harnessing visual, participatory, and narrative methods to build dynamic new links between Vancouver and other cities.

AIDS in Two Cities pioneered an innovative bifocal approach of: A) Using “cities” as the analytical lens for looking at programmatic and policy responses to HIV/AIDS; and B) Using a commonalities approach to challenge the paternalistic assumptions that have formed the basis for the north-south development model.