Mountain States Genetics Conference

This past week was the Mountain States Genetics Conference here in Denver. It is a yearly conference for all states that have the Rocky Mountains in them. The top presentation this year was called Positive Exposure. It was fantastic! Everyone wanted to quit their jobs and work for this cause.

The presentation was given by a top fashion photographer that has photographed people like Cindy Crawford and Nicole Kidman and worked as Revlon's photographer for many years. He was always around beautiful people, and it had a certain impact on what he thought was beautiful. One day he was walking on the street in NY and saw an albino girl waiting for the bus. Even though she didn't meet what the fashion industry viewed as beautiful, he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He knew she was albino, but didn't know anything about that genetic disease. He went straight to the library and got every book he could find on albinism. All the pictures he saw in the medical textbooks were awful. He contacted a NY albinism group and said he wanted to photograph some people. He published a few magazine articles of beautiful albino girls, and worked with the group to expose albinism in a positive way. It had great impacts on the albino community and gave them more confidence that they could still be beautiful even though they had a genetic disorder.

A few months after his magazine articles did so well, another genetic disorder (trisomy 13 or 18, I forget!) asked him to come and talk to their community, to show that they could be beautiful too. He looked them up in medical books as well, and found the same awful pictures. Most textbook pictures have a child/adult in their underwear, against a white wall, with a black bar across the eyes. How can people be confident with their disorder if they are viewed so badly? He presented his albino pictures to them, and took their pictures as well.

Many genetic disorders started to want him to come and speak, and organization Positive Exposure was started. He gave up fashion photography, and now only photographs genetic disorders. He travels all over the world to give positive exposure to genetic disorders. To see come really awesome photographs, go to http://www.positiveexposure.org.

One of the best and saddest stories he shared with us is about albino kids in Tanzania. They are hunted for their bones. Tanzanian witch doctors can make a special potion for you, but it requires bones of an albino child, the younger the stronger the potion. The kids are literally hunted. There is a school for the blind that is highly protected (fences, guards, etc) that parents will send their albino children to when they are born. (A lot of albino people have vision problems, but not all. The version that African people get, usually has blindness.) They teach song and dance at this school, as that is an important part of African culture. On the website there is a video of these children singing that is amazing. He asked them if they had ever competed, and they said "no, we are disabled." He was like that doesn't matter, you don't have to be able to see to sing! He entered them in a competition which they won. The video starts with the first time they sang for him, then practice before their competition, then the competition. The first time they did amazing. The practice you can tell they are really scared, but then they get into it. The competition is VERY moving. I got all teary eyed, and I never do that! They start out slow, then get more comfortable. When people start to applaud and cheer, they are TERRIFIED. They have never heard an audience before, and since they can't see, they didn't know there were 40,000 people there, and when they heard them clapping and cheering, they didn't know what that noise was! It is so sad and awesome at the same time. They freeze and start panicking, and their teacher has to go on stage and tell them what is happening. Then they get really excited and start singing and dancing, and getting REALLY into it. A really really great video!

This was a really awesome presentation, and I really recommend the website. They have traveling art exhibits, and you should definitely go if they ever come to your area! They are also working with medical schools to form a teaching curriculum and a few other things. It is a really great organization!

Ashley