Images of Suffering

It is not impossible to imagine that this is a face from the distant past. An eternal face of suffering. The boy’s face wears the imprint of disease untreated. His silent stare is met by our fascination. Can we imagine the pain? Can we imagine the despair? Is it rude for us to stare? Is there a lesson to be learned from the looking?

The photograph was made by Kent Klich in Mehai, the municipal hospital in Constanta, Romania. During the last decades of the twentieth century, then President Ceausescu of Romania set about to manipulate the genetic pool of the people of his country. The results of this experimentation were vast numbers of children held in concentration camps, malnourished and mistreated. Large numbers of this group became infected with the HIV virus and it was not until Ceausescu’s downfall that the secret of this tragedy became completely known to the world. Through the use of tainted blood supplies and infected needles, the experimental medical procedures caused an unprecedented and tragic spread of AIDS though this group of children.

This boy survived at least until 1997 when the photograph was made. His image is one of seventy-five published in Children of Ceausescu, Umbrage Editions, New York, 2002.

The boy from Romania is not alone in his suffering. The pandemic of AIDS has swollen and flooded around the world. The continent of Africa, southeast Asia and Russia are dealing with staggering numbers. Modern medicine has aggressively moved to control and prevent the spread of the virus and continued to search for a cure. The result is a containment in the affluent western world. There is some hope for those with the wealth to afford the costly drugs needed to slow the advance of the disease.  This leads us to the question of how modern medicine and its brilliant advances are being utilized for all of humankind? In this country we all have personally witnessed the powerful gifts of modern medicine. The children of Romania and countless millions of others, especially in the third world, are waiting. The answer to this conundrum is of course the disgraceful acknowledgment of where the power lies to make the gift of health available. It lies not with the care-givers but with the governments and the business concerns that have been able to wrest its control. Looking again at the boy’s face, the next question that arises and confronts us — knowing this, what do we do? The millions wait not for an answer but for action.

Kent Klich / Magnum Photos
Constanta, Romania. 1997.
Mehai, The Municipal Hospital in Constanta.