Rick Guidotti

Founder and Director

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.  (Albinism is a genetic condition that results in the reaction or absence of pigmentation in the hair and skin.) 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 five 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.

In 2015 Kartemquin Films released ON BEAUTY. Click here to see trailer.

Film Festival Laurels. Most prominernt: Chicago International FIlm Festival, Winner Audience Choice Award.

SYNOPSIS

From Emmy®-nominated IN THE FAMILY filmmaker Joanna Rudnick and Chicago’s Kartemquin Films comes a story about challenging norms and redefining beauty. ON BEAUTY follows fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, who left the fashion world when he grew frustrated with having to work within the restrictive parameters of the industry’s standard of beauty. After a chance encounter with a young woman who had the genetic condition albinism, Rick re-focused his lens on those too often relegated to the shadows to change the way we see and experience beauty.

At the center of ON BEAUTY are two of Rick’s photo subjects: Sarah and Jayne. In eighth grade Sarah left public school because she was bullied so harshly for the birthmark on her face and brain. Jayne lives with albinism in Eastern Africa where society is blind to her unique health and safety needs and where witch doctors hunt people with her condition to sell their body parts. We follow Rick as he uses his lens to challenge convention and media’s narrow scope of with the help of two extraordinary women.

PRESS

“***1/2. Upbeat and inspiring, this is highly recommended.”

Video Librarian

“ON BEAUTY is, quite simply, a masterful example of how cinema can serve as a humanizing force in the world. We need films like this.”

RogerEbert.com

“ON BEAUTY is a film filled with beautiful moments…it has a serious message, but it’s presented in the most uplifting way possible.”

Parents Magazine

“ON BEAUTY questions our cookie-cutter standards…transforms our perceptions.”

LA Times

“The film is an agent for social change, encouraging discourse on society’s perceptions of beauty and normality.”

Newsweek

“Inspiring documentary.”

YouBeauty.com

“Profoundly moving… A surefire way to begin discussions about beauty and the power of perception.”

Booklist

“In On Beauty, Joanna Rudnick tackles the underexplored issue of skin and chromosomal disorders that affect facial appearance and facial muscle function in Africa and the United States in order to expand definitions of beauty beyond the narrow parameters of the beauty industry.”

Vanita Reddy, Films for the Feminist Classroom

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • Cleveland International Film Festival, Jury Award, Best Documentary Short
  • Chicago International Film Festival, Audience Award, Best Short Film
  • Geneva Film Festival, Jury Award, Best Documentary Short
  • Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, Audience Award, Best Short
  • Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
  • Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival
  • Newport Beach Film Festival
  • Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
  • Doc NYC
  • Reelabilities: NYC Disabilities Film Festival
  • American Documentary Film Festival Palm Springs
  • Reelabilities: Houston Disabilities Film Festival
  • Frozen River Film Festival