Time Out On Holiday Street
Simon Crofts
Oct 12 - 7 Nov, 2010


If you are HIV+ and you live in Kiev, sooner or later you will visit Holiday Street, for that is the rather inappropriate name of the street where Kiev AIDS Centre is located.

This series of portraits looks at some of the rarely-glimpsed people who, in one way or another, tend to AIDS patients in Kiev and surrounding regions - parents, doctors, nurses, social workers, telephone helpline operators and so on. Many face discrimination for having contact with the infected due to widespread public ignorance, and many do not tell friends and neighbours where they work.

Ukraine is the first European country outside Russia to face an AIDS epidemic on this scale. It is estimated that 1.6% of Ukraine's adult population - nearly half a million Ukrainians - are HIV+. The epidemic has been largely fuelled by drug use and increasingly spread via heterosexual transmission, including through the sex industry. In Kiev, around a quarter of all prostitutes are infected. The stigma attached to being confirmed HIV+ is a powerful disincentive to being tested. General public reaction to the epidemic has been to ostracise those who test positive.

Discrimination is rife. Ignorance even more so. Not only among the public but also medical practitioners - cases of GPs refusing to treat HIV+ patients have been reported. Many victims are afraid to consult their local health clinics for fear that others may learn about their health status.

These portraits are a testament to those who work on Holiday Street, and to the immense personal sacrifices they make every day.
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Exhibition
12 Oct - 7 Nov, 2010
Private Viewing
12 Oct 2010, 6pm -7pm

About Simon Crofts

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After a degree from Oxford, Simon worked as a lawyer in Moscow at a time when Russia was just emerging from the Soviet Union. This gave a backstage view of some of the reasons why Russia was transforming in the way it did. After he left Moscow, Simon lived in Krakow, Poland, for six years working as a photographer.

Simon has had a fascination with Slav culture and peoples, and in particular, Russia and Ukraine, since the age of six, not long after watching his first James Bond movie. He speaks fluent Russian and bad Polish. Simon now lives in his native Edinburgh where he works as a freelance photographer for a wide range of editorial and commercial clients, but he still pays regular visits to Eastern Europe and Russia, pursuing personal projects and working on corporate commissions.

For more information about Simon's work, please visit his website.