Digital Gallery
All Themes
Explore a curated selection of public health posters about AIDS drawn from the collections of the National Library of Medicine. Learn more about the role identity, geography, and various lifesaving measures have played within AIDS awareness and education work over the years.
The Minority AIDS Project
In 1985, four years into the national health crisis, African Americans and Latinos accounted for three times as many cases of AIDS as whites. To address the growing disparate epidemic and counter the myth that AIDS was a “gay white disease,” Archbishop Carl Bean and members of the Unity Fellowship Church founded the Minority AIDS Project (MAP) to support communities in southern Los Angeles. Their bold, bilingual campaigns stressed AIDS as a very serious, rapidly growing problem in communities of color and provided information on prevention and care for those with AIDS. MAP, working alongside two other community-based organizations—Blacks Educating Blacks About Sexual Health Issues (BEBASHI) and Black and White Men Together—became examples for future organizations focused on assisting African Americans and Latinos affected by HIV/AIDS.
View images in this themeNative People Respond to HIV/AIDS
Since 1987, the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center (NNAAPC) has offered programs and outreach to Native communities. The NNAAPC's Social Marketing Clearinghouse includes a variety of educational resources, including posters, which have been tailored to individual Native nations in many parts of the country. Many of the posters displayed here reflect the work of tribal governments and local community organizations as they strive to educate their citizens and non-Native neighbors about AIDS. Although not originally focused on HIV/AIDS prevention or awareness, staff at health clinics and support organizations frequently counseled individuals on pursuing safer, healthier behaviors and, in the process, became key participants in fighting the epidemic in Indian Country. The images here reflect an array of culturally— and oftentimes tribally-specific messages aimed at a broad, new audience that required help and information.
View images in this themeThe Whitman-Walker Clinic
Initially called the Gay Men’s VD Clinic upon its opening in 1973, the Whitman-Walker clinic was renamed in 1978, in honor of Walt Whitman, the famous American poet, who made his life with men, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a feminist activist and medical doctor, who dressed exclusively in men’s clothes and was the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor for her service as a surgeon during the Civil War.
As early as 1983, the clinic staffed the first AIDS hotline in the city, and within two years, it opened multiple homes for people with AIDS. In addition, Whitman-Walker was at the forefront of designing and distributing safer-sex materials that targeted a range of audiences. Even as the clinic created campaigns to help all kinds of people, it never forgot to attend specifically to the needs of men who had sex with men.
View images in this theme“Please Be Safe” by the Northwest AIDS Foundation
In 1987, with funding from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Seattle-based Northwest AIDS Foundation launched the “Please Be Safe” campaign to help gay and bisexual men reimagine their sexual behaviors. Using a different creative visual strategy than the sexually charged imagery of some contemporaneous public health efforts, this campaign used road signs—a straightforward, familiar set of symbols—to discuss and advertise sexual safety. The “Please be Safe” or “Rules of the Road” campaign used road signs and compelling, straightforward, community-specific language to help gay men engage in safer sex. The “Sexual Safety Card” featured on many of the posters provided quick and accessible information on activities at every level of safety.
View images in this themeSouth Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN)
In 1986, DiAna DiAna, an African American hairdresser with a salon in Columbia, South Carolina, took action when a local newspaper refused to run an advertisement for condoms. She began to use her salon as a space to engage customers in conversations about safer sex.
Later on DiAna met Bambi Sumpter (now Gaddist), a public health educator, at an AIDS workshop. The two women formed the South Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN). The organization initiated a full-scale campaign to use popular culture to entice people to think about AIDS prevention. They wrote plays, and held Tupperware-style parties with prizes that could be used to make sex safe.
Emerging from this culture are a series of posters, by an unknown artist, that typify DiAna's approach to AIDS prevention: positioning the epidemic as a situation empowered community members could take on.
View images in this themeHarm Reduction/Clean Needles
In the early 1980s, many believed that identity not behavior put people at risk for contracting AIDS. Known collectively as the 4 H’s: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin users (representing all intravenous drug users), and Haitians, the four groups were considered vulnerable and blamed for spreading the disease. Intravenous drug users brought with them an all-too-familiar public health challenge. How do you inform, protect, and support a group that engages in behaviors deemed illegal and potentially considered wrong or sinful?
One answer, as illustrated in these public health campaigns, was harm reduction—the idea that if you could not stop people from using intravenous drugs, you could provide people with information about how to protect themselves while doing so. Using straightforward language, these campaigns spoke to needle users and the people who had sex with them.
View images in this themePostcard Politics
By the mid-1980s, as the AIDS epidemic became a full-on crisis, AIDS activists turned to art and graphic design to illustrate and punctuate their responses to the disease and the resulting social crises. Soon artistic activism insisted that visual culture had tremendous power to affect behavioral and political change. Artists and activists plastered urban neighborhoods with posters featuring provocative images that forced some to confront their homophobia and others to reimagine what they could do to fight AIDS.
In addition to creating posters, artists reproduced those images as postcards. These small, portable, inexpensive items were visual reminders of how big the AIDS crisis had become. Displayed for the taking at bars, restaurants, neighborhood shops, and community centers, these postcards allowed activists to reach an even wider audience.
View images in this theme78 Images
AIDS is an equal opportunity disease!
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Minority AIDS Project, 1986
Strong and straightforward, this MAP (Minority AIDS Project) poster presented the science-based facts about transmission and prevention of AIDS using informal language and a stern tone. The poster also featured an image of a stylish African American woman who might not (but should) consider herself at risk.
He has AIDS, we love him
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Minority AIDS Project, 1989
Not unlike the disease itself, people with AIDS faced powerful stigmas that transcended racial boundaries. This poster reminded African American communities that it was and is okay to interact with, hug, and love people with AIDS. Through the voices of children and loving families, the poster helped to erode the myths and fears associated with people with AIDS.
What you don't know can kill you
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Minority AIDS Project, 1989
The statistics here provided compelling evidence of how AIDS affected people of color. From 1989 to 2010, the percentage of AIDS cases among African Americans had nearly doubled, and infections among Latinos had also increased to 20% of the total AIDS cases in America.
¡Usted Es Siempre El Ultimo En Saber! ¡Y lo que no sabe lo puede matar! (You're always the last to know! And what you don't know can kill you!)
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Minority AIDS Project, 1989
By reminding a Spanish-speaking audience “What you don’t know can kill you,” posters like this one focused outreach information for Latinos, who were and remain disproportionately represented in AIDS cases. This poster used epidemiology and data to get the attention of their audience.
AIDS—it kills Indians too!
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Native American AIDS Advisory Board, ca. 1980s-1990s
In addition to a straightforward message to counteract a common myth among some Native communities that AIDS is a disease that affects only gay men, this poster drew a clear line between the universal impact of AIDS and death by depicting a cremation ceremony conducted by some Native nations. In other words, like death, everybody is susceptible to AIDS.
Grandfather, you are wise in the old ways, give us the wisdom about AIDS
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South Dakota Division of Education, ca. 1989
Native elders occupy positions of leadership and command respect in their communities, so outreach to and education through them about AIDS offered a key opportunity to reach younger Native people, who often look to them for advice and instruction in how to lead better and more productive lives.
How well do you know your partner?
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Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center, ca. 1980s-1990s
Sexual networks became a common theme of AIDS outreach. This poster, from the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center, reminded women to take the responsibility to talk to partners about their sexual history, stressing the women’s autonomy and the importance of protecting their own health.
Keep AIDS out of our tradition—educate and prevent now
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South Dakota Division of Education, ca. 1990
This poster featured an illustration by Donald F. Montileaux, also known as Yellowbird, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota. He depicted a Native woman in traditional dress to emphasize the poster’s main message about AIDS prevention.
Look, listen, avoid!
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Tulsa Area Chapter of the American Red Cross in collaboration with the Indian Health Care Resource Center, ca. 1980s-1990s
Three Native men dressed in traditional to contemporary attire stand around a tombstone while a line of people walk toward a buffalo skull. The skull symbolizes the 19th-century demise of the buffalo—an emblem of Great Plains Native culture—and also references the “Vanishing Indian” theory, a widely held notion among Americans that Native peoples, like the buffalo, were dying out. Although public health campaigns for Native audiences did not often address gay men explicitly, it is likely that health workers recognized their increased risk of being infected with AIDS. In response, posters like this one focused on Native males and their traditional roles as warriors and providers as a way of reaching men in the community.
Love yourself get tested
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Indigenous Peoples Task Force, Minneapolis, MN, ca. 1990s
The Minnesota-based Indigenous Peoples Task Force presented information to local tribes on HIV prevention. This poster used the art of nationally recognized artist Dana Tiger, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, to encourage people to get tested for HIV.
Our ancestors didn’t see AIDS in our future—prevent now
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South Dakota Division of Education, ca. 1990
To appeal to a sense of tradition, this poster from the South Dakota Division of Education and the Centers for Disease Control described the changing landscape of the 1980s, calling for a new focus on protection from and prevention of AIDS.
In the fight against AIDS, you’ve got the power
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Whitman-Walker Clinic, undated
Targeting African American teens directly, this poster provided accurate, confidential information to help them stay safe. In 2012, African Americans represented 70 percent of the AIDS cases among teenagers, despite comprising only 13% percent of the total teenage population.
Men of the 90's, top, bottom, both do the safe thing
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Whitman-Walker Clinic, ca. 1990s
This interracial couple and straightforward acknowledgement of gay sex practices shows an effective trend in AIDS education campaigns. By the 1990s, AIDS organizations could speak honestly and directly to gay audiences, often without fear of censorship.
No ifs, ands or butts...
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Whitman-Walker Clinic, ca. 1980s-1990s
Fear and stigma of people with AIDS came directly from confusing sexual practice with the people who engaged in it. This Whitman-Walker poster made the issue much clearer, noting that unprotected anal sex was dangerous, not the man, or woman, who was having it.
The Names Project AIDS Candlelight Memorial March
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Whitman-Walker Clinic, 1992
In 1986, Cleve Jones of San Francisco stitched a quilt panel to memorialize a friend he had lost to AIDS. This began one of the world’s largest memorials for those who died from AIDS. By 1992, the AIDS Memorial Quilt had a panel from each state in the country. By 2012, the quilt had grown to more than 48,000 panels.
Washington remembers, October 8th and 9th, 1988
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Whitman-Walker Clinic, 1988
The AIDS Memorial Quilt was first displayed in the nation’s capital in 1987. Containing nearly 2,000 panels, it drew more than half a million visitors, which prompted a nationwide tour. When the quilt returned to Washington, DC, the following year, the number of panels had quadrupled.
Caution, positive thinking alone won’t prevent AIDS
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
This poster from the Northwest AIDS Foundation reminded readers that all the positive thinking in Seattle (or the world) wouldn’t protect them from AIDS. However, taking precautions to have safer sex provided protection for everyone: “Because safe sex is the new rule of the road. Of that you can be positive.”
Dead end, this is the alternative to safer intercourse
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
While some public health campaigns focused on asking people to make a choice between sex and having AIDS, this poster emphasized safer sex practices men could use, focusing on anal sex. The poster provided explicit recommendations and ended with a lighthearted tone designed to encourage change in Seattle’s gay community: “Be part of the new gay spirit. Follow the rules of the road.”
Detour, AIDS is not the end of the road
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
The Northwest AIDS Foundation’s public health campaign worked to build a community around safer sex practices, noting sex with a condom as one of several new norms. This poster highlighted the Seattle gay community’s power to change minds and practices, putting responsibility with the community’s members with the call to action: “What you can do about AIDS.”
Don't let the fear of AIDS drive you out of control
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
By the time this poster was distributed, tens of thousands more had been diagnosed with AIDS, causing panic. This poster directly addressed the fear by encouraging men to play safely in order to regain self-respect and self-control.
Meet the safety pin
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
An extension of the Northwest AIDS Foundation “Please Be Safe” campaign was the “Safety Pin,” a symbol that the wearer believed in and practiced safer sex. Efforts like this helped spread information about AIDS and created new community norms that stressed prevention and safety.
Men working, good news for the 3 out of 4 gay men who follow the new rules of the road
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
Instead of asking the reader to choose between sex and safety, this poster made a strong case for practicing safer sex. It provided positive news about Seattle's gay community and advice for staying healthy for those who didn't carry the AIDS virus as well as those who did, stressing immediate personal action as a way to stay healthy: “So if you begin safer sex now, the odds are on your side.” The “Men Working” sign highlighted the effectiveness of these efforts: the actions of Seattle's gay community were keeping people healthy; preventing the spread of AIDS.
Sexual safety is a two-way street
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
This poster emphasized the dual responsibility of taking care of oneself and one's sexual partner and used the protection of others as a powerful motivator to practice safer sex: “But don't forget that unsafe sex puts two lives at stake. don't let down your guard. don't let down your partner.”
Sexual safety, one step at a time
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
In the 1980s, the threat of AIDS could feel overwhelming: researchers, doctors, public health officials, friends, partners, and the media constantly presented new, and sometimes conflicting, information about the epidemic. The four steps outlined here—encouraging the reader to be a student, salesman, explorer, and fighter—stressed positive prevention strategies and emphasized developing new practices for pleasure.
Slow, you don't need to slam into reverse to leave the fast lane
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
The Northwest AIDS Foundation “Please Be Safe” campaign promoted “a healthy, sexy gay life,” rather than advocating celibacy as the only option. The “Sexual Safety Card” provided a list of activities with a range of associated risks to help men make informed decisions about a variety of sexual activities, as well as a caution against using drugs and alcohol in excess, which could impair the good judgment described by this poster.
The gay community takes a turn for the better
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Northwest AIDS Foundation, ca. 1980s
In other cities, such as New York and San Francisco, people in gay communities argued over the best ways to protect themselves from AIDS without limiting some newly earned gay rights to be more open and sexual freedoms such as participating in bathhouse culture. The Northwest AIDS Foundation’s approach celebrated a successful response to living with/preventing the spread of AIDS from a unified community that included open discussions of sexual practices and how to best engage safely and responsibly.
Always use latex condoms
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South Carolina AIDS Education Network, 1988
In this poster, South Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN) used a straightforward approach to stress the importance of condom use for African American men, who did not initially consider themselves at risk for AIDS. SCAEN leaders also distributed free, gift-wrapped condoms to the female patrons of the beauty shop that served as their headquarters.
Baby, I could just die for you
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South Carolina AIDS Education Network, 1988
South Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN) began in a small hair salon in South Carolina. The owner, DiAna DiAna, presented information about safer sex to women to help them navigate real-life situations such as pressure from a partner not to use a condom.
Bound by the Chains of ignorance, Learn about AIDS
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South Carolina AIDS Education Network, ca. 1980s
As South Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN) evolved, their posters adapted a more polished aesthetic but continued with a hand-drawn style and a simple message that spoke to a southern African American community.
Learn to live, learn about AIDS
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South Carolina AIDS Education Network, 1988
This poster aims to encourage African American women to learn more about AIDS. The challenge persists to today African American women frequently underestimated their own risk for the disease. This persists today: in 2013, two out of every three newly diagnosed American women are black.
Mommie, what do I take to a war on AIDS?
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South Carolina AIDS Education Network, 1988
Hairstylist DiAna DiAna and Dr. Brandi Sumpter founded South Carolina AIDS Education Network (SCAEN) to reach southern black women with information about AIDS for themselves and their families. By placing a rifle in the hands of the child pictured here, the activists suggested the gravity of the AIDS epidemic.
My baby brother has AIDS and now he’s too sick to play with me anymore, daddy, why?
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South Carolina AIDS Education Network, 1988
AIDS could impact every member of a family, including boys and girls, brothers and sisters. Children in black communities have consistently been overrepresented in AIDS cases nationwide. As of 2013, African American children were twice as likely to be diagnosed with HIV than their white peers.
A man who shoots up can be very giving, he can give you and your baby AIDS
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National Institute on Drug Abuse, ca. 1980s
This poster features a pregnant White woman whose male partner uses intravenous drugs. She is regarded as an infector of babies rather than as a person with AIDS deserving care.
A man who shoots up can be very giving, he can give you and your baby AIDS
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National Institute on Drug Abuse, ca. 1980s
In the early 1990s, the National Institute on Drug Abuse called on women to seek treatment to protect their children, including those yet to be born, from AIDS. This poster features a pregnant African American woman whose male partner uses intravenous drugs. The accompanying text warned, “Babies with AIDS are born to die,” and suggested women get tested for HIV before becoming pregnant and use condoms to protect themselves.
A man who shoots up can be very giving, he can give you and your baby AIDS
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National Institute on Drug Abuse, ca. 1980s
This campaign pictured women of all races, acknowledging that drug use happened in all communities, and emphasized that women should seek treatment as mothers. This poster features a pregnant Latina whose male partner uses intravenous drugs.
A lot of people are getting stuck with AIDS
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AIDS Resource Center, Dallas, TX, ca. 1980s
This poster attempted to reach not only drug users, but their families and friends as well, in the hopes that by reaching the user’s social network, campaigns like this would be more successful in educating people on the dangers of sharing needles.
AIDS can blow your high, if you’re not going to stop, at least use clean needles
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Health Education Resource Organization, Baltimore, MD, 1987
Much of the outreach to drug users focused on getting people to “simply” stop using drugs. This poster from the Health Education Resource Center offered a message that focused on making risky behaviors safer.
Don't share needles, Don't get stuck with AIDS
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Michigan Department of Public Health, AIDS Prevention Program, 1988
The grim image here makes a straightforward connection between needle-sharing, AIDS, and death. Campaigns like this one relied on fear as a motivator for people to take steps towards safer practice.
Don't share!
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Project Safe, Denver AIDS Prevention, 1988
Sharing needles became widely known as a dangerous practice in public health communities, but with little political will or funding to provide users with clean needles, some organizations chose to stress how to sterilize needles for reuse. This poster communicates a simple and cheap measure that would help prevent the spread of AIDS in intravenous drug user communities.
“Hey man, let me use your works,” famous last words
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People of Color Against AIDS, ca. 1980s
By using a conversational and perhaps familiar line, this poster from the People of Color Against AIDS offered an example of a realistic situation that drug users may have experienced, along with a strategy to use if it came up.
If you won't kick an old habit, start a new one
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AIDS Administration, Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 1988
Risky behaviors could be made safer; sex with a condom or injecting with a clean needle both minimized the likelihood that a person with AIDS would pass it on to a partner. This poster offers both solutions, as well as appealing to the reader’s sense of responsibility to protect others by making choices to stay safe.
A national disaster
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publisher unknown, 1990s
Ricky Ray was the oldest of three boys, all of whom had hemophilia and contracted AIDS after receiving blood transfusions as babies. In 1987, when the Ray brothers, aged ten, nine, and eight, won the court-appointed right to attend school, arsonists destroyed their Florida home. In 1992, Ricky passed away from AIDS-related complications at age 15. The middle brother, Robert, also died of AIDS-related diseases when he was 22. In 2013, the youngest brother, Randy, is 33 and still alive.
AIDS is still a crisis
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unknown publisher, undated
The increasing apathy toward AIDS has had significant consequences for adolescents. Teens represent more than half of the estimated undiagnosed cases of HIV/AIDS in the United States; between 2006 and 2009, HIV diagnoses increased in people 15—24 years of age, despite a stable HIV diagnoses nationwide.
Ignorance = fear, silence = death
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Keith Haring Foundation, 1989
In the 1980s and 90s, artist Keith Haring’s widely recognized figures championed AIDS education and compassion, what was then a new cause. Today, Haring's foundation continues to support AIDS organizations nationwide, including AIDS Project Los Angeles, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and Gay Men's Health Crisis.
Make love not AIDS
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Hotstamp, 1998
RuPaul Andre Charles, a gay artist and icon, has long engaged in AIDS advocacy work whether as a partner in the make-up company MAC's AIDS awareness campaigns, a spokesperson for the AIDS Fund, or, as a model in this postcard riffing on the famous slogan “Make Love, Not War.”
Read my lips
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ACT UP, 1988
Gran Fury, an artists' collective within ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), created iconic materials, including postcards, to spread information and promote education about HIV and AIDS. The mantra featured here subverts President George H. W. Bush's notable quip about no new taxes, delivered during the 1988 Republican National Convention, to call attention to his ambivalent support on AIDS outreach, education, research, and support.
