FILM REVIEW: ON BEAUTY

Sarah Kanney in On Beauty.

Face forward

By Miranda Inganni

 

Joanna Rudnick’s 31-minute documentary, On Beauty, follows Rick Guidotti, a former fashion photographer who now takes portraits of kids with visible genetic conditions.

 

Frustrated with the restrictions of the fashion world, and thanks to a chance encounter with a young lady with albinism, Guidotti decided to challenge convention and turned his lens on boys and girls who were not always shown in a favorable light. As he started to consider genetic conditions, Guidotti found himself disgusted by the so-called black bar images found in medical textbooks and wanted to humanize the kids who are so often depicted as their condition rather than a person. Thus Positive Exposure was created to help change the restrictions of conventional beauty.

Once such person to benefit from Positiv Exposure is Sarah Kanny. Kanney was born with a large birthmark on her face and brain caused by Sturge-Weber syndrome. Many of her classmates were not kind. Eventually it was too much and Kanney dropped out of high school in the 9th grade due to incessant bullying. Her adolescent years were a lonely time.

These days Kanney has a job and an apartment and is working toward her GED. She speaks at high schools – in front of the very types of kids who caused her so much pain – about her experiences in the hope of fostering inclusion and acceptance.

Another force for change, Jayne Waithera, lives in Kenya where she was raised by her grandmother after her mother abandoned her due to Waithera being born with albinism. Having been photographed by Guidotti, Waithera is now working on Positive Exposure Kenya to bring awareness and understanding to a community that deeply, occasionally fatally, misunderstands albinism.

Guidotti’s exuberance is infectious. He greets everyone with an abundance of glee and that joy is returned by those whom he encounters. The images he captures are filled with radiance and beauty – smiles of children happy to be seen yet not scorned.

 

 

On Beauty opens in Los Angeles this Friday.