As part of NHS Blood & Transplants Living Transplant Initiative, Gift of Living Donation in partnership with Guy’s Hospital, put together a photographic collection of black living donors.
The aim of the photographic portraits is for black people to relate to the people in the photographs and be able to imagine themselves helping their loved ones by becoming a living donor. We want the photographs to empower patients with chronic kidney disease who need a transplant to start having conversations about living donation with their family and in turn for family members to be inspired to become a living donor.
Photographer | Polly Todd
There are over 600 black men and women with chronic kidney disease waiting for a transplant, there is a need for more black donors. We hope that these portraits will help shift the cultural attitudes that many people from the black community have towards donating.
The portraits presents powerful and thought-provoking photographs of African Caribbean men and women, who live, work and socialise in London. They are wives, sisters, daughters, nieces, mothers, husbands, fathers, sons and brother.
They are ordinary men and women who have continued living their lives after giving a loved one the ultimate gift of life by donating one of their kidneys. They took a risk that they didn’t have to take and had an operation that they did not need. There are also loved ones who offered to donate a kidney but were not compatible.
