AIDS Posters Chart 30 Years of an Epidemic

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November 2, 2011 • 5:30 am PDT
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Dr. Edward Atwater was sitting on a train in Boston in the early 1990s when he witnessed medical history: A government poster featuring two hands opening a condom wrapper. “I thought it was remarkable,” Atwater says. “When I went to medical school 35 years earlier, it was illegal to teach anything about contraception in Harvard Medical School.”

So Atwater, a collector of medical ephemera, called Boston's public health department and asked for a copy of the poster from the train. Then, he spent the next 20 years snapping up AIDS educational posters from around the world. Here is a small selection of Atwater's collection of more than 6,000 pieces, with messages ranging from calls to chastity to puerile double entendre. The designs—now available online through archivists at the University of Rochester—navigate the space between cultural artifact, sex ed, and high art. (This 1987 World Health Organization poster is the work of designer Milton Glaser, the man behind the original I Love New York campaign).

Amanda Hess
Lifestyle Editor, GOOD

Posted in: Lifestyle

Tags: health,; aids,; hiv,; lifestyle

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