Up Against the Wall:
Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster
RIT Press
2022
Co-edited with Jessica Lacher-Feldman and William M. Valenti, M.D.
This 232-page book complemented the exhibition Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster, which was presented at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York. The book featured scholarly essays and a portfolio of nearly 150 examples of visually arresting and socially meaningful posters. Some of these posters were accompanied by commentary written by an international roster of designers, activists, researchers, policymakers, and social scientists, among others.
The posters, spanning the years from 1982 to the present, showed how social, religious, civic, and public health agencies have addressed the controversial, often contested terrain of the HIV/AIDS pandemic within the public realm. Organizations and creators tailored their messages to audiences, both broad and very specific, and used a wide array of strategies, employing humor, emotion, scare tactics, simple scientific explanations, sexual imagery, and many other methods to communicate powerfully and effectively.
Credits
Editors: Donald Albrecht, Jessica Lacher-Feldman, and William M. Valenti, M.D.
Designer: Marnie Soom/RIT Press
Publisher: RIT Press
