The Fitzrovia Chapel was proud to present The Ward – by Gideon Mendel. In 1993, Mendel spent a number of weeks photographing the Broderip and Charles Bell wards at the Middlesex Hospital. The Broderip was the first dedicated AIDS ward in London and was opened in 1987 by Princess Diana. Twelve of these poignant black-and-white images were first exhibited at the chapel in 2017, the location taking on special resonance as the chapel is now the only remaining building of the Middlesex Hospital.
DATE SHOWN
Mendel’s photographs captured a crucial moment in history, when HIV/AIDS carried profound social stigma and treatment options were extremely limited. He focused on four patients—John, Steven, Ian, and Andre—documenting their lives, relationships with families, friends, and carers, and the way the ward community supported one another. Their willingness to be photographed during such a fearful and uncertain time was an extraordinary act of bravery. Tragically, all four patients died shortly after the photographs were taken, falling ill just before life-saving antiretroviral treatments became available.
The images revealed the wards not simply as clinical spaces, but as communities where staff and patients formed deep bonds. Treatment was an active, collaborative process, with patients deeply engaged in their care and staff forming strong emotional connections that went far beyond conventional hospital routines. Mendel’s black-and-white photographs show the fragility of life alongside the courage, dignity, and resilience of those living with HIV at a time when it was widely considered a death sentence.
The Ward – Revisited expanded upon the original exhibition with a large-screen video installation of previously unseen images accompanied by a specially composed soundtrack. A new short film featured interviews with those appearing in the photographs, including John’s mother Patsy, Sarah and Hannah Feeney, Dr Rob Miller, Jane Bruton, Dr Ade Fakoya, Dr Duncan Churchill, Sarah Macauley, Chris Mazeika, and Mendel himself. These first-hand accounts offered insight into the creation of the images, the experiences of those photographed, and the enduring impact of the exhibition.
Marking thirty years since the photographs were taken, the exhibition offered a visceral and moving exploration of HIV/AIDS, memory, and human connection. Once challenging and provocative, the portraits had since become tender, poignant reminders of resilience, compassion, and hope. Visitors experienced an immersive journey into a time of fear, loss, and extraordinary humanity, leaving with a renewed sense of understanding and reflection.
The Ward – Revisited honoured the bravery of those photographed, the dedication of hospital staff, and the progress made in HIV/AIDS care, demonstrating how these images continue to speak powerfully to new audiences decades later.
29 and 30 January 2023
The Fabric of Love: Kids (5 yrs+) workshop inspired by The Ward – Revisited – An age-appropriate kids (5 yrs+) craft workshop inspired by our exhibition The Ward-Revisited and the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Wednesday 1 February 2023
Picturing HIV – Panel discussion looking at the representation of AIDS/HIV in popular culture from television theatre magazines and graphic design.
Friday 3 February 2023
The Ward – Revisited: Gideon Mendel in Conversation with Isaac Huxtable – Photographer of The Ward, Gideon Mendel, discusses the project’s evolution over thirty years with arts writer Isaac Huxtable.
You can watch the interviews on Vimeo if you can’t make it to the chapel.
OVERVIEW
The 2023 exhibition The Ward at Fitzrovia Chapel returned to the powerful themes first explored in the chapel’s 2017 presentation of The Ward. The exhibition centred on the work of South African photographer Gideon Mendel, whose intimate portraits documented patients on the Broderip and Charles Bell wards of the former Middlesex Hospital during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mendel’s photographs captured moments of vulnerability, care and companionship, offering a deeply human record of a period marked by fear, stigma and extraordinary resilience.
Displayed within the chapel’s richly decorated Byzantine-inspired interior, the photographs took on an added emotional resonance. The quiet intensity of the portraits contrasted with the chapel’s lavish gold mosaics, stained glass and marble surfaces, creating a reflective space where visitors could consider themes of mortality, compassion and remembrance. The exhibition reconnected the chapel to its former role within the hospital, inviting audiences to reflect on the lives and stories that once unfolded in the wards that surrounded it.
The Ward formed part of the ongoing cultural programme at Fitzrovia Chapel, which brings contemporary art and historical reflection together within this remarkable building. By revisiting Mendel’s photographs decades after they were taken, the exhibition not only honoured the individuals represented in the images but also acknowledged the continuing importance of remembering the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the communities shaped by it.
ABOUT
Gideon Mendel is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary photographers. Born in Johannesburg in 1959, he studied psychology and African history at the University of Cape Town. Following his studies he became a freelance photographer and was one of the young generation of ‘struggle photographers’ documenting change and conflict in South Africa in the lead-up to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
In 1990 he moved to London, from where he has focussed on social issues globally. He first began photographing the topic of AIDS in Africa in 1993 and in the past sixteen years his ground-breaking work on this issue has been widely recognized. His intimate style of committed photojournalism, whether in black and white or in colour, has earned him international acclaim. He has won six World Press Photo Awards, first prize in the American Pictures of the Year competition, a POY Canon Photo Essayist Award, the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography and the Amnesty International Media Award for Photojournalism.
He has worked for many of the world’s leading magazines—among them National Geographic, Fortune Magazine, Condé Naste Traveller, Geo, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Guardian Weekend Magazine, L’Express and Stern Magazine.
His first monograph, A Broken Landscape: HIV & AIDS in Africa, was published in 2001. Since then he has produced a number of pioneering photographic advocacy projects working with charities and campaigning organizations, such as The Global Fund, MSF, Treatment Action Campaign, The International HIV/AIDS Alliance, Action Aid, The Terrene Higgins Trust, Shelter, Leonard Cheshire Disability, UNICEF and Concern International.
In his current practice he has been working on a variety of new advocacy projects often involving a mix of photography and video. His engagement with the practice of collaborative photography is manifest in two different projects: He is the co-director of the global Through Positive Eyes project that involves working with groups of HIV positive people who use cameras to document their own lives with the goal of challenging stigma and the 3EyesOn project which is dedicated to finding innovative ways of working with young children, often from poor communities in the UK, to photograph their own lives.
Since 2007 he has been working on a major project addressing climate change, entitled ‘Drowning World’ which involves travelling to a variety of flood ravaged locations around the world. It was exhibited for the first time in the East Wing Gallery at Somerset House in London in May 2012.
Artists website: https://gideonmendel.com
