Every so often, someone will contact me to collaborate on a project raising awareness about living with HIV. Where possible, I enjoy meeting others who raise awareness and was very pleased that I could meet up with Steven Doyle, a photographer from north Dublin who has a photography project for the last few years on PLWHIV – People Living With HIV.

Steven contacted me at the end of June to see if I would be interested in collaborating. He has worked in Romania for 15 years with children who had been abandoned by their parents because of an HIV diagnosis.

When I saw his message come through on Instagram, I jumped at the chance. Who would not want to be part of a project that already includes people like Robbie Lawlor, Eliane Becks Nininahazwe, Rory O’Neill, and many others?

Yesterday, I met up with Steven, and we went back to his house, where we spent a few hours taking photographs and chatting about my story from diagnosis to the current day. On quite a number of occasions, I mentioned some discrimination that had come my way, mainly in the Irish Health Service. It is safe to say that Steven was rather taken aback by some of what has happened to me in the last few years, interacting with the health service here in Ireland.

While he generally thought that I should have taken cases against those who discriminated, I replied that I am much more a person who will want to argue and then lead those who are astray back to where they ought to be. I’m never sure that a legal route is, strictly speaking, the best way of resolving differences.

Later in the evening, Steven sent through some photographs from those taken in the afternoon. I never realised my eyes were that blue.

It’s always important to raise awareness about people living with HIV, to put faces to the statistics. I’ve been doing this since 2010 in my own way via my blog. I cannot imagine me stopping doing so. I hope that more of us in and around Dublin and across Europe and the world can work together to ensure that no one does not know about HIV.

Of course, I also got four fantastic photographs that I can use on my social media now. Thank you Steven!