Shining out from the Instagram slag heap, amid the endless A.I. selfies and reaction reels, is an account so quiet in presence and noble in intention that it is sometimes hard to believe it exists. The account, The AIDS Memorial, is an evolving testament, told in photographs, videos and user stories, to lives lost to a devastating and, it can occasionally seem, forgotten epidemic.
The stories and photos are of lovers, parents, children, relatives, acquaintances and friends taken by the disease, and they are edited — and more generally guided into existence — by one man, Stuart Armstrong, from his home outside Edinburgh. To date, Mr. Armstrong has posted more than 11,000 of these tales, and if you are aware of them at all, that may owe to one woman: Madonna.
The 65-year-old singer was early among the 269,000 followers of The AIDS Memorial. And, if it did not inspire her outright, the Instagram account served as the basis for a showstopping element of her current “Celebration” tour, which comes to Barclays Center in mid-December. That is, a photo montage depicting a fraction of the 40 million people who, according to World Health Organization statistics, have succumbed to the disease.
Full article at New York Times
