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Robert Stone

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June 5, 2011

AIDS, PLUS 30

Ten years ago this month, I published a multimedia story on The Digital Journalist Website that chronicled the 20 years of the AIDS crisis in photographs, testimonies, and video. I canvassed various leaders in the photography field and asked each to choose one image that represented a milestone in the visual representation of the pandemic and to discuss the significance of that pivotal picture. (At the annual Online Journalism Awards ceremony, the micro-site -- created with the help of DigitalJournalist.org's founder, Dirck Halstead, and multimedia producer-director David Snider -- was named 2001's best story produced by an independent website.)

Herewith, a link to that site to mark the 30th anniversary of the emergence of what would become the disease known as AIDS. We have lost so many loved ones. And we have so far yet to go.

As photographer Herb Ritts (1952-2002) remarked at the time, one of the legacies of AIDS has been the void it has left within the world of photography. "It's what you don't ever see," said Ritts. "The photography that hasn't been made. Photographs that will not be there on the walls. I just hope, 20 years from now, there's no 40-year reunion on this subject."