An Editor's Eye

theatlantic:

30 Years of AIDS: 6,200 Iconic Posters, 100 Countries, One Collector

Dr. Edward Atwater didn’t realize it then but he wasn’t just amassing ephemera when he began assembling the world’s largest collection of AIDS posters decades ago. He was documenting 30 years of medical, social, and visual history.

More than 6,200 posters in 60 languages from 100-plus countries later, the retired 85-year-old physician is now sharing these artifacts through an online catalog produced by the University of Rochester, where he worked most of his life as a professor of medicine. Though some of these prints had been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and other sites, this is the first time the collection is available to the public in its entirety — or at least that’s the end goal as fewer than 2,000 have been uploaded thus far. Read more