Reininger, Alon
Israeli, b. 1947
A series of images from this project were published in LIFE magazine in 1988, but one photograph in particular—Ken Meeks, Patient with AIDS, Being Cared for by a Friend, San Francisco, California—struck a resonant chord. The photographer flew to see Meeks at his home three days before his death, and in a heart-wrenching picture, Reininger captures the ailing man with a haunted look on his face and lesions visible on his arms beneath a hospital gown. The picture was named World Press Photo of the Year in 1986 and became one of the emblems of the crisis. Looking back fifteen years later, Photo District News named it one of the most important images in photojournalism in the 1980s and 1990s. As Reininger has noted, however, he thought of Meeks as a single character in a much bigger story and placed the picture within a broader context. Even after the media's interest in the ongoing crisis began to wane, Reininger pushed for continued exposure.
German, b. 1970 and German, b. 1968