Contact: Andrew Arnold
(415) 447-2412
Community Response to AIDS Documented in POH Photo Display
Exhibit at LGBT Center Spotlights Locals Who Fought Back in Early Days of the Epidemic
 |
 |
 |
SAN FRANCISCO - How the people of San Francisco came together to fight the AIDS epidemic is the subject Project Open Hand at 20 Years: A Community Responds to Crisis, a photography exhibit, on display at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center through mid-January 2007.
Presented by The San Francisco LGBT Community Center and Queer Cultural Center, the Project Open Hand display features ordinary people recalling the early days of San Francisco's AIDS crisis, and underscores the everyday heroism of the LGBT community, who faced the grim realities of AIDS when the disease devastated the city.
It was in 1985 that Project Open Hand's founder Ruth Brinker, a retired food service manager in San Francisco, started cooking and delivering meals for seven, young, gay men dying of AIDS. Brinker believed that malnutrition was killing many people before they succumbed to AIDS, and with the help of volunteers, started a "project" to comfort the dying with a nightly warm meal. She continued on with her efforts, preparing more and more meals every day, and soon founded Project Open Hand.
In 2005, as part of an oral history project to mark Project Open Hand's 20th anniversary, Claudia Goetzelmann, an award-winning San Francisco photographer, created the portraits that became Project Open Hand at 20 Years. The exhibit highlights early clients, staff, volunteers and community supporters of Project Open Hand, as well as a portrait of Brinker herself, and each photo is accompanied by text describing key memories of the AIDS crisis. San Francisco's LGBT community rallied behind Ruth Brinker's vision, and the portraits powerfully evoke the early grassroots efforts to care for people with AIDS.
Project Open Hand at 20 Years will be on display at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center from November 15, 2006 to January 15, 2007. A reception to mark the opening of the exhibit will be held on November 29, 2006 from 6:30pm to 9:00pm at the LGBT Center at 1800 Market Street in San Francisco.
