ABOUT THE EVENT
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It’s easy. Just click “Edit Text” or double click me to add your own content and make changes to the font. I’m a great place for you to tell a story and let your users know a little more about you.
Throughout our work we honor and celebrate each person's uniqueness as we learn about their specific interests and passions, their "things", which has now become the basis of our campaign #whatsyourthing. We all have our “things”; we invite you to reflect on your own interests and passions, focusing on how the universality of the emotions that come up brings us all together beyond the constraints of any diagnoses.
Celebrating our shared humanity
Positive
Exposure
ABOUT THE EVENT
Our PRISMA (Precision Medicine in Autism) group is a multidisciplinary effort at University of Alberta, Casa Mental health, bringing together genetic counselors, child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrists, and other clinicians and researchers, under the direction of Dr. Daniel Moreno De Luca. We work closely with individuals with a diagnosis of autism or neurodevelopmental conditions who come to see us in the context of mental health needs, often helping to identify an underlying genetic diagnosis.
Throughout our work we honor and celebrate each person's uniqueness as we learn about their specific interests and passions, their "things", which has now become the basis of our campaign #whatsyourthing. We all have our “things”; we invite you to reflect on your own interests and passions, focusing on how the universality of the emotions that come up brings us all together beyond the constraints of any diagnoses. What is your thing?
In this collaboration with Positive Exposure, we use photography to raise awareness about the importance of diverse individual perspectives and their ability to collectively strengthen our shared humanity and our community.
MEET THE ARTIST
Rick Guidotti
Rick Guidotti, an award winning photographer, worked in NYC, Milan, Paris and London for a variety of high profile clients including Yves St Laurent, Revlon and L’Oreal. His work has been published in newspapers, magazines and journals as diverse as GQ, People, the American Journal of Medical Genetics, The Lancet, Spirituality and Health, the Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly and LIFE Magazine.
Rick founded POSITIVE EXPOSURE after a chance encounter in 1997 with a young lady living with albinism at a bus stop in New York City. As an artist, Rick was taken by her extraordinary beauty. In a quest for a better understanding of albinism, Rick sought out medical textbooks, where he was affronted by the dehumanizing images depicting disease, lacking all humanity. It was this experience which forced Rick to turn his lens from the more traditional ideas of beauty, to the beauty and richness of human diversity.
Rick has since spent more than twenty years collaborating internationally with advocacy organizations/NGOs, medical schools, universities and other educational institutions to effect a sea-change in societal attitudes towards individuals living with genetic, physical, behavioral or intellectual difference.
WHAT'S YOUR THING? PHOTO EXHIBIT
