Editorials tend to reduce a chosen topic to a sequence of neat cliches. An editorial on the 20-year history of AIDS and photography, for example, might trace a safe, tidy arc, recounting images of victimization, then rage, then power and dignity and transcendence; images of people dying with AIDS giving way to images of people living with AIDS.

Such an editorial might focus on the somber complacency and false sense of security that has set in, in this era of cocktail drugs, even as the disease takes a disproportionate toll on the disenfranchised in our society, even as HIV ravages entire societies across the globe.

Enough of editorials - - and editors. The Digital Journalist has decided, instead, to let photographers - - and photographs - - address this subject directly, 20 years after the first mention of AIDS in American medical literature (appearing in the June 5, 1981 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.)

Every month, we try to showcase the power of photography through the versatility and interactivity of the on-line picture-magazine format. To that end, we open our web pages, this issue, to three dozen committed men and women. Their theme: The impact of photography on AIDS and AIDS on photography. Together, they speak with compassion, diversity and clarity.

Today, more than 36 million people live with HIV/AIDS, 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

The Digital Journalist invites you to explore these links to other AIDS-related websites.

Your interest, your involvement and your contributions are encouraged and appreciated.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt: www.aidsquilt.com
Design Industries Fighting AIDS: www.diffa.org
Friends in Deed: www.friendsindeed.org
God's Love We Deliver: www.godslovewedeliver.org
Artists With AIDS: www.artistswithaids.org
Elton John Aids Foundation: www.ejaf.org
Youth HIV: www.youthhiv.org
AIDS Walk: www.aidswalk.net
Gay Men's Health Crisis: www.gmhc.org
Visual AIDS: www.visualaids.org
American Foundation for AIDS Research: www.amfar.org
World AIDS Day: www.worldaidsday.org
Lambda Legal Defense Fund: www.lambdalegal.org
United Nations AIDS Program: www.unaids.org
Treatment Action Campaign: www.tac.org.za
Action Aid: www.actionaid.org