Access to Life

The most recent posting on the Magnum blog, Access for Life looks at a success story about AIDS. When antiretroviral drugs first appeared in the 1990s, they made it a maneagable chronic disease for the 5% or so of sufferers who could afford the treatment. In recent years campaigns including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria launched in 2002 have cut costs and introduced new ways of using the drugs so that many more can continue to live.

The Access for Life web site features work by eight Magnum photographers in nine countries around the world, photographing peope before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. So far I’ve only looked at the story from Russia by Alex Majoli which is featured on the blog, and which tells a powerful story making use of his colour and black and white pictures along with some simple snatches of video and a fine soundtrack (with sub-titles for the Russian dialogue) but I’ll go back and look at the others on the web site later. They feature some of my favourite photographers, including at least four I’ve previously written about.

Other photographers on the website along with Majoli , are Paolo Pellegrin, Jim Goldberg, Gilles Peress, Jonas Bendiksen, Steve McCurry, Eli Reed and there are two reports from Larry Towell covering Swaziland and South Africa.

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