Supported by the Global Fund on the ground, the eight 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.

The people with whom the artists interacted extended beyond those suffering disease themselves, to embrace their loved ones, their children and parents, literal families no less than families of affinity and choice. In bringing them together for this exhibition, Access to Life proposes...