Gisèle Wulfsohn

Gisèle Wulfsohn (18 March 1957 – 27 December 2011) was a South African photographer. Wulfsohn was a newspaper, magazine, and freelance photographer, most known for documenting various HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns. She died in 2011 from lung cancer.

Wulfsohn was born in Rustenburg, South Africa. She attended Johannesburg College of Art, where she studied graphic fine art.

Wulfsohn started her professional career as a staff photographer at The Star newspaper in 1979. In 1983 she moved to STYLE magazine, and in 1986 she was appointed chief photographer for Leadership Magazine. In 1987 she went freelance and joined Afrapix – a photographic collective documenting social issues and the anti-apartheid struggle.

Starting in the late 1980s Wulfsohn documented various HIV/AIDS awareness initiatives. Some of her early work documented training with traditional healers conducted in the early 90s with AIDSCOM. In 1999–2000, while working for the Department of Health's "Beyond Awareness" campaign, she shot a series of photographs of 31 South Africans who had publicly disclosed their HIV status. Her "Living Openly" photographs were published in newspapers and magazines around South Africa, and were displayed at the Durban International Aids Conference.

The "Living Openly" project featured in a TV documentary that was broadcast numerous times in 2000. Her "Living Openly" exhibition was displayed at various centres and conferences, including at the Aids in Context Conference at WITS University in April 2001, and the Healing Through Creative Arts Conference at Museum Afrika, in Johannesburg, in November 2001.

Wulfsohn's HIV work is described in her own words as her 'HIV/AIDS photo journey', and the Centre for The Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria produced an illustrated calendar of her work just before she died.

Wulfsohn's commitment to documenting the struggle against HIV and AIDS in South Africa continued over 20 years and was regarded as seminal. A comprehensive record of her work in the field has been compiled by Annabelle Wienand. Her HIV work has featured in publications all over the world: the Australian Human Rights Centre's 'Human Rights Defender' carried a feature of her work in the July 2014 issue (Vol.23, Issue 2).

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