Health

Access to Life: The Global Fund

Eight Magnum photographers capture the external aspects of the lives of individuals marked by AIDS

Magnum Photographers

Paolo Pellegrin Kassi Keïta, 3, had been sick for 18 months before being diagnosed HIV-positive. His mother, Mariam Dembélé, 31, is also being treated for AIDs. Mali. 2008. © Paolo Pellegrin | Magnum Photos
Paolo Pellegrin Massaman Keïta, 31, and Fatoumata Camara, 20, married five years ago, and made their living farming millet and cotton. Both HIV-positive and too weak to work, they left their rural village for Bama (...)
Chris Steele-Perkins Visiting the home of Judy Tbeka, a HIV nurse in a clinic supported by Oil Search. She lives there with her daughter Juliette who is HIV positive, her husband Alois Bedum and brother Junior Tbeka. J (...)
Chris Steele-Perkins Visiting Esther Eka who is HIV positive and undergoing treatment with retrovirals at her home and garden. Tari, Papua New Guinea. 2012. © Chris Steele-Perkins | Magnum Photos
Jim Goldberg Veera Babu Mogili, 40, is HIV positive. He is gay, very active sexually (visits hotspots most nights when well) and lives with his mother, to whom he is very close, in a village north of Kakinada. (...)
Alex Majoli Igor Tereshenko, Ward 3, AIDS Center, Ulitsa Bumazhnaya 12, 2-nd floor, Room 5. Probably will not survive. Spinal tumor in the neck segment. Heroin. Not on ART yet. St Petersburg, Russia. 2007. © Alex Majoli | Magnum Photos
Alex Majoli Buildings. St Petersburg, Russia. 2007. © Alex Majoli | Magnum Photos
Alex Majoli Mother, Tamara Valentinovna Tereshenko. Igor Tereshenko, Ward 3, AIDS Center, Ulitsa Bumazhnaya 12, 2nd Floor, Room 5. Probably will not survive. Spinal tumor in the neck segment. Heroin. Not on AR (...)
Jonas Bendiksen Sunday church prayers at a small baptist church in Cange. Plateau Central, Haiti. 2007. © Jonas Bendiksen | Magnum Photos
Jonas Bendiksen AIDS patient receiving ARV treatment Marie-Thérèse Noël, 41. Plateau Central, Haiti. 2007. © Jonas Bendiksen | Magnum Photos
Jonas Bendiksen Marie-Sonie St Louis, 33. She had started ARV treatment just prior to us arriving. Of the patients I covered, she stayed in the most rural area, in a rural smallholder farm, with 8 family members. (...)
Gilles Peress Olive Ukwizabigira and her son, Janvier. Kigali, Rwanda. 2008 © Gilles Peress | Magnum Photos
Eli Reed Juan Carlos Huaman, 19, is a former prostitute living with HIV. Peru. 2007. © Eli Reed | Magnum Photos
Eli Reed Jose Luis Tomajanbo, 60, began HIV treatment on December 12, 2007 and hopes that it will help him regain his health and work again. Peru. 2008. © Eli Reed | Magnum Photos
Eli Reed Juan Carlos Huaman, 19, is a former prostitute living with HIV. Peru. 2008. © Eli Reed | Magnum Photos
Larry Towell Siphiwe Tfumbatsi's child. Swaziland. 2007. © Larry Towell | Magnum Photos
Larry Towell Ntombizandile Mati. Swaziland. 2008. © Larry Towell | Magnum Photos

Supported by The Global Fund on the ground, eight Magnum photographers – Jonas Bendiksen, Jim Goldberg, Alex Majoli, Steve McCurry, Paolo Pellegrin, Gilles Peress, Eli Reed, and Larry Towell – embraced the responsibility to visualize the external aspects of the lives of individuals marked by AIDS and its afflictions.

It wasn’t only the people suffering from the disease with whom the artists interacted, it also extended to their loved ones, their children and parents. In bringing them together for this exhibition, Access to Life proposes that these citizens of nine separate countries are unified beyond borders in their collective struggle to forestall mortality and to participate in networks of compassion and solicitude.

The resulting body of work was first shown at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington in 2008 and has since been exhibited and published widely.

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