Overcome with a feeling of discomfort or uncertainty, most people either stare or look away immediately when walking toward a person with physical differences, Rick Guidotti said.
Photographing individuals with genetic differences, Guidotti is a world-renowned photographer who hopes to change society’s perception of what "beautiful” means.
“Working with this incredible community that I’ve been working with for the last almost 20 years, I’ve been told that sometimes that looking away is even more painful than staring,” Guidotti, founder of the non-profit organization, Positive Exposure, said.
Positive Exposure “utilizes photography, film and narrative to transform public perceptions of people living with genetic, physical, intellectual and behavioral differences,” according to its website.
Sponsored by the Scripps College of Communication in collaboration with the College of Fine Arts, the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and the College of Health Sciences and Professions, Guidotti will be visiting Ohio University on Thursday as part of his “Positive Exposure: The Spirit of Difference” tour.
The Positive Exposure Exhibition opened Monday in the VisCom Gallery in Schoonover Center, showcasing Guidotti’s images that celebrate the beauty of diversity in physical differences. The exhibition is open until Oct. 1.
Luke Fikaris, a senior studying information and telecommunication systems, described his experience at the exhibition as educational.
“The pictures were nice, but the part that was most interesting was reading who the people are, what they are doing with their lives and what disease they’re dealing with,” Fikaris said.
Before starting Positive Exposure in 1998, Guidotti worked as a fashion photographer for clients like Elle and Yves St Laurent all across the globe.
His career would be flipped on its head though at a bus stop one afternoon in Manhattan while on break from a photoshoot.
Guidotti saw a “stunning” girl with with pale skin and white hair, according to Positive Exposure’s website.
“I just saw how beautiful she was, yet I realized I never met a model that looked like that,” Guidotti said.
Poring over medical textbooks to learn more about the genetic condition albinism, Guidotti did not see images with subjects like the beautiful girl he saw at the bus stop.
“I found images of kids, not just with this condition albinism, but all kinds of conditions, all represented the same way — usually naked, up against walls in doctors offices, usually with black bars across their eyes,” Guidotti said.
Ever since, Positive Exposure’s philosophy has been to “change how you see, see how you change.” The international tour encompasses pop-up exhibitions, lectures by Guidotti and workshops focusing on using the visual arts to challenge the stigma and celebrate diversity.
“The photos give people the permission to see beauty and interpret beauty in their own right,” according to Positive Exposure’s website.
“(Positive Exposure) is starting initiatives in East Africa where witch doctors are saying, ‘Bring me the bones of a person with Albinism, and we’ll make a potion that will make you richer,” Guidotti said. “And it’s happening not 100,000 years ago. It’s happening two weeks ago.”
The goal is to push people to realize that their own passions and talents can make a difference simply by challenging the unattainable beauty standards currently in place.
“The industry itself, they’re certainly selling a product. That’s why (there are) these unattainable beauty standards. But, I think it’s important that we have other perspectives added to that as well,” Guidotti said.
