Why HELEN Is So Positive About Positive Exposure
Rick Rader, MD
Summary: Photographer Rick Guidotti and his nonprofit, Positive Exposure, have spent decades challenging the dehumanizing ways people with disabilities and genetic differences are often represented. Through photography, education, and advocacy, their work replaces stigma with visibility, dignity, and belonging.
Seven girls with Down syndrome at the Institute for Feeble Minded Children, 1902. Source: National Medical Library
(Left): “Primary Imbecility” Source: Amentia Plates. (Right): “Baby on man’s lap” 1895, Source: Welcomme Collection
Helen is lucky to be on the receiving end of having its covers provided by the award-winning photographer Rick Guidotti. Rick is the founder of Positive Exposure. Positive Exposure has transformed into a global movement, celebrating the beauty and richness of human diversity.
(Left): “Clemson University Students” and (right): “Levi”, Source: Positive Exposure
For more than 25 years, Positive Exposure has operated as a 501(c)(3), building a more equitable, compassionate world for individuals and communities at risk of stigma and exclusion. They resonate with the belief that we all share the same need: The need to be seen. They need to be heard. The need to belong.
Photo (right): “Guadalupe” Source: Positive Exposure
At Positive Exposure, they create spaces rooted in unity, respect, and inclusion through photography, film, educational programs, and advocacy at their galleries in New York City and around the globe.
Positive Exposure has transformed the image, the portrayal, and the humanity of the question, “what difference does the difference make?”
When Rick first got interested in how genetics was manifested in human form, he started to study the available medical texts and journals. Much to his dismay he found photos of individuals that rivaled “mugshots” of criminals, the haunted and the deranged. Surely there needed to be a better way. Readers of HELEN now know Rick found a “better way.”
Photo (left): “Michelle”, Source: Positive Exposure
HELEN feels that from time to time we need to be reminded of where we have been, to better appreciate where we are, and to pay tribute to those pioneers who led the way.
Photo (right): “Marc”, Source: Positive Exposure
Since October is Down syndrome awareness month, we thought we would remind you of how individuals with an extra chromosome were photographed, depicted, and displayed. We are not providing this to shock you, to distress you or to anger you, but instead to provide you with a historical appreciation and reminder of how images ensure that we instantly formed negative impressions of people with Down syndrome. In presenting it we also pay tribute to the pioneering work of Rick G and Positive Exposure.
About the Author
Rick Rader, MD, FAAIDD, FAADM, DHL (hon), Director, Habilitation Center, Orange Grove Center Editor-in-chief, HELEN, Journal of Human Exceptionality