Bloodworks is a series of portraits conceived by artist Wayne Martin Belger to reflect on the realities of HIV thirty years after the disease surfaced.

The project was inspired by Wayne’s best friend David, who is HIV positive.  Diagnosed about 18 years ago, David’s case is unusual because he is a male infected through sex with a female.  He felt a sense of separateness from other HIV positive people because he wasn’t part of the homosexual community.  He even kept his status from Wayne throughout years of climbing trips, finally disclosing it before a surfing expedition in a dangerously rocky area.  Wayne felt compelled to explore the stigma HIV positive people feel burdened with.

The camera Wayne created for the project is named Untouchable, after the Dalits in India.  Wayne draws a parallel between these Indian people who are arbitrarily considered polluted, and people around the world infected with HIV.

HIV is a blood disease, a virus that attacks specific blood cells which make up the immune system.  Since blood is such an integral part of the subject, Wayne incorporated it into the camera.  Untouchable is the only camera in the world that circulates human blood.  The blood was donated by his HIV positive friend David.

Like all of Wayne’s cameras, Untouchable is a pinhole camera.  Pinhole cameras work by allowing light to enter through a tiny circular hole into an otherwise lightproof container with some kind of film at the back.  They do not have a lens.  Untouchable was built out of aluminum, copper, titanium and acrylic.  Blood pumps through the chambers and between two pieces of acrylic thousands of an inch apart that work as a red filter in front of the pinhole.  The blood, which is treated with heparin sulfate to prevent coagulation, tones the film.  It is replaced about every nine months.  A picture of David, taken by the camera that holds his blood, is displayed on the back of the camera now.

The images produced by Untouchable are ghostly, misty and luminescent with a red glow.  The red is highly saturated and vital.  The photos capture a feeling of a heart beating and draw the viewer in to make out the features of the individual.

I was first introduced to Wayne and one of his cameras, Yama, at Beyond Eden last October. Yama, named for the Tibetan God of Death, was created from the skull of a 500 year old Tibetan monk. The skull actually holds two cameras, side by side, through the eye sockets, to produce simultaneous exposures that can be projected to view what Yama saw in 3d. Yama has two purposes, to take pictures of people affected by the Tibetan exodus and people posing as modern interpretations of ancient deities.

Each of Wayne’s thirteen pinhole cameras were made for and from the subject they shoot. Untouchable incorporates HIV positive blood and shoots photos of HIV positive people. Yama was crafted from a 500 year old Tibetan skull and captures people affected by the Tibetan exodus. Another camera, Sons of Abraham (9/11) was constructed from a solid block of Aircraft Aluminum. Incredibly, it’s inlayed with a piece of an 1860s Bible, a 1960 Koran and a Hebrew prayer book from 1880. Light passes through a piece of metal support beam salvaged from the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The camera captures black and white images of Imams, Priests and Rabbis holding their Koran, Bible or Torah in front of their Mosque, Church or Synagogue. The theme of these works is “within darkness comes light.” Wayne hopes to conclude the series with one color image taken in Jerusalem featuring an Imam, Priest and Rabbi with their respective texts.

Each concept was the springboard from which Wayne constructed his cameras. He machines and assembles every part by hand, without blueprints or computers. When he begins the painstaking process he has no idea if the finished product will work the way he envisions. But it all allows him to physically connect to the subject matter.  And because the cameras are as much a statement as the photographic prints, all of his installations display them side by side.

Wayne does describe himself as anal. When he had finished building Untouchable, he asked a friend who was a phlebotomist to draw some of his blood so he could test the camera.  While the needle was in his arm, he started to feel dizzy and actually passed out.  But his friend continued to draw the blood.  She knew that Wayne would be less forgiving if he didn’t get the quantity of blood he needed because she stopped to take care of him. Even in the studio, he has to be coaxed to break and take refreshment.  And he spends months processing the images in the darkroom before he is satisfied with a final print.  These obsessive qualities imbue his work with a powerful energy.

Wayne’s friend Lisa Derrick noted my enthrallment with Yama at Beyond Eden, and was kind enough to extend an invitation to me to watch Wayne shoot with Untouchable last Sunday.  Few invitations could prompt the excitement and honor I felt as this one to watch this creative and thoughtful artist work.

The shoot took place at artist Shawn Barber’s tattoo studio, Memoirs, in West Hollywood.

I was profoundly moved by the experience.  In the six hours I was there, ten complete strangers to the artist came in and shared one of the most intimate and difficult details about their life.  The models included vocal activists such as Thelma James, Michael Kearns, and David L. Kelly as well as people who are less public about their status.  The first model I met, Sandrine, a mother who has turned her life around after an arrest for drugs and prostitution revealed she was infected, hasn’t even told her father yet.  Just that day the ten models represented several decades, races and sexual orientation. As different as they were, they are in their situation because of choices they made, choices any of us could make on any day, that changed their lives for ever. They put their trust in Wayne that their stories would be portrayed with dignity.  I can’t imagine anything more courageous.

In addition to myself and Wayne and each model, several people came in and out including Lisa Derrick, Shawn Barber, a friend of Lisa’s, a journalist from LGBT/POV, and art publicist Lee Joseph.  We were all snapping photos.  As I stood in the studio, listening to the loud and intrusive beeps, clicks and shutter sounds of the digital cameras and smart phones capturing the moment, the silent pinhole camera seemed much more elegant.

As each model took his or her place in front of a black backdrop, Wayne would make sure he or she was comfortable and then say “Exposed” to let them know that the camera was creating the image.  I heard the word over and over and it began to take on a different meaning for me as symbolic of their public gesture.

Since the light has to pass through the blood, a lot of light and a long exposure, generally about a minute and a half, are needed to produce a clear image.  During that time the models have to stay as still as possible, though rapid blinks are too quick to be perceived.  I became aware of just how long a minute and a half can feel when I held eye contact with the model Greg during one of his exposures.  I’d met Greg only a few minutes before in the studio.  Looking into his eyes, I felt vulnerable and extra self-aware.  I wanted to send positive, encouraging, even warm loving energy to Greg and that, along with the pressure to stay very still to the point where I was  almost holding my breath, made the minute and a half feel eternal.

The energy in the room shifted with each model.  Since the exposures are long, the model has time to think, which can cause powerful emotions to bubble up.  At one point I stepped out for a few minutes.  When I crept back in I felt a heaviness in the studio and realized model Sam Page, a tan and golden haired physical trainer, was crying.  I found Sam’s description of the experience in an article Lisa Derrick wrote on LAFIGA:

“I had to stand still for about two minutes for each shot (he took four) because of the exposure time of the lens.” Sam wrote.  ”While standing there, I stared into the wood floor — and somehow, made out the reflection of my mom’s face looking back at me. Tears began to stream as I thought about all of those who have died—and how important these images will be in telling our stories about the stigma that still exists between the HIV negative and the HIV positive gays. It was truly one of the most moving experiences of my life, when time literally stood still, and I cried, seemingly on cue.”

Models Harriet and Isabella had an almost opposite reaction.  The only models shot as a pair that day, this HIV positive mother and daughter made the studio glow with their golden, vivacious spirit.  The rest of us in the studio were trying not to laugh when the intwined pair suddenly got the giggles during an exposure.

“It really charges me,” Wayne said about the energy and spirit of the participating models.

In 2010, Wayne did several public shoots at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI.  Wayne was touched by the amazing response in a conservative area where few were open about their status.  Surrounded by hundreds of onlookers, his subjects included a director of a prestigious hospital and a soccer mom and her son.  He still gets letters from people who were moved by the project.  The exposure of such integrated members of the community opened up a dialogue about the disease.

So far, in addition to Los Angeles and Grand Rapids, Wayne has also taken images for Bloodworks in Tucson and San Francisco.  He also has shoots planned in Portland, Orlando and New York City.  And in the spring he’s going to various African destinations including Ethiopia, Liberia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and the Congo.  He will stay with African families whose members are all HIV positive.  While most HIV positive people in America have access to medication that manages their condition, Africa is still very much in crisis.  In Sierra Leone in particular, there is an AIDS highway of infected people trying to leave the country because they can’t get medicine.  No one wants to harbor these diseased refugees and many of them drop dead on the walk.  Wayne hopes that his project will contrast the face of this disease in different geographical areas.

Bloodworks will be fully unveiled, filling four walls from floor to ceiling, at a December 2012 group show called Talismans at the Royal Ontario Museum in Montreal, Canada alongside the Third Eye, Yama and Heart cameras and photos.  Other artists participating in the group show include Joel Peter Witkin, Steven Gregory, Marc Quinn, Robert Krasnow, WhiteFeather, Francois Robert, Weiki Somers, Charles LeDray, Rosamond Purcell and Mark Prent.

Wayne does sell his cameras and prints to collectors, but each camera is one of a kind, and most prints come in a limited edition of less than ten.  Collectors of the cameras must allow Belger to borrow them to continue a series, but they do get copies of each new print.

In addition to Yama, Wayne has another skull camera named Third Eye, which was designed to study the beauty of decay.  Wayne plans to build one more skull camera to complete the trilogy.  The last one will include three human skulls, from a man, a woman and a child, placed back to back to give the camera a 360 degree view.  The man’s skull will be adorned with cut precious stones and metals and a stone from Mars as a bindi.  The woman’s with hundreds of pearls and a Moon stone bindi.  And the child’s with uncut precious stones and a piece of ancient meteorite as the bindi.

For more information on Wayne and his cameras, visit his website, Boy of Blue Industries, or his Facebook page.  Thank you very much to Lisa Derrick who reached out to me and invited me to witness art history in the making.  Thank you to Shawn Barber for welcoming me into his studio, the models for their openness and Wayne for patiently answering questions and tolerating my hovering.  It was an experience I won’t soon forget and I look forward to seeing the finished images from this shoot in particular.