My Memories Maputo, Mozambique 2007 by Funeka Nceke

Playing with Tires Maputo, Mozambique 2007 by Funeka Nceke

Damiao Light Ray Maputo, Mozambique 2007 by Funeka Nceke

With 15 children, 15 women and cameras, the story of living with one of the worlds most devastating diseases, HIV-AIDS, unfolds. GALLERY M in conjunction with The Venice Arts organization, is please to provide photography collectors with an insight to raw photojournalism: "The House is small but the Welcome is big."

The following collection and the biography of Funeka Nceke reveals how children and women responded to basic photography training in order to document their daily lives and those around them while coping with the realities of being HIV + in Africa (captured primarily in Maputo Mozambeque and Cape Town, South Africa). This is their journey told from their own perspective.

Funeka Nceke is 28 years old and lives in the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha, in a shack with no electricity or running water. She lives with her two children, ages 12 and 8 months, her niece and her niece's boyfriend. She learned that she was HIV positive in 2003. Funeka wanted to be in the project to show her friends her status and have them accept her. She wants them to see that HIV positive people can be "fresh and healthy" and to take photos of her house, her happy children, and TAC (Treatment Advocacy Campaign) marches. Funeka would love for the video, being created as a part of this project, to go to television so that she can tell everyone her status and show that she is not afraid of anything.

Funeka turned out to be a talented photographer. With tuition paid through the project, Funeka went to photo school in Cape Town. She also added a room to her shack with money received from the sale of her photos.

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