Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster offers nearly 200 examples of visually arresting and socially meaningful posters. Taken from more than 8,000 held in the collection in the University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries' Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation. The collection, one of the largest of its kind in the world, was donated to the University of Rochester by Dr. Edward Atwater. The book accompanies an exhibition of AIDS education posters displayed at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. The posters, spanning the years from 1982 to the present, show how social, religious, civic, and public health agencies have addressed the controversial, often contested terrain of the HIV/AIDS pandemic within the public realm. Organizations and creators tailored their messages to audiences, both broad and very specific, and used a wide array of strategies, employing humor, emotion, scare tactics, simple scientific explanations, sexual imagery, and many other methods to communicate powerfully and effectively.

Prizes

Commended for Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards (Popular Culture) 2021

While scholarly in its focus, the text is readable to a wider audience, and makes an essential addition to any collector of health-focused and activist art. * Bay Area Reporter *
Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster, edited by Donald Albrecht, Jessica Lacher-Feldman, and William M. Valenti M.D. offers a fresh perspective on watershed decades in our community. * Queer Forty *