The opportunity to document the HIV/AIDS pandemic at its epicenter in sub-Saharan Africa, was extended to me by my friend, Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her husband, Charles, served as U.S. ambassador to Tanzania during the final two years of Bill Clinton’s second term. Armed with little more than a passionate desire to photograph people who were living with HIV/AIDS as they would wish to be seen — not dying from disease, but living with it, with humanity and dignity — I began photographing and documenting the lives of those who suffered needlessly from a disease they never saw coming and did not understand. My work has taken me to more than a dozen countries in Africa, to Mexico and Central Asia, and I am humbled by the courage of so many wonderful people I have met along the way who did not choose to be HIV-positive, but who have chosen to live with HIV positively.