The Bonham Project (Armpits), Jon O'Neal

Artwork Overview

Jon O'Neal, The Bonham Project (Armpits)
Jon O'Neal, The Bonham Project (Armpits)
Jon O'Neal
The Bonham Project (Armpits)
1989
Jon O'Neal
born 1957
The Bonham Project (Armpits), 1989
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: gelatin silver print
Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 351 x 229 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 381 x 229 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 15 x 9 1/2 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 25 x 20 in
Credit line: Gift of the artist
Accession number: 1991.0160
Not on display
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Archive Label: A physician and a photographer, KU graduate Jon O’Neal responded to the AIDS crisis with photographs of the areas of mens’ bodies that are examined to detect AIDS. O’Neal here shows various subjects posing as if they were undergoing one common diagnostic technique for uncovering the presence of AIDS, which is a simple palpation of underarm lymph glands. O’Neal began The Bonham Project in 1985, when he was a medical intern in San Antonio participating in one of the military’s first rounds of systematic tests for the AIDS virus. The men O’Neal examined were HIV positive but bore no outward signs of disease. His job was to look at their bodies for symptoms of AIDS. That bodies could be HIV positive and have no symptoms that showed up in visual and tactile examination fascinated O’Neal and led him to this project. To make these photographs, O’Neal set up a makeshift photography studio in a local disco, the Bonham Exchange, where he could photograph the bodies of the men he had examined and of other men who volunteered.