The best way to sum up my two days with the Noonan Syndrome community is to say that I can't remember the last time I heard so much laughter. I was at the conference on Rick Guidotti’s invitation to learn more about the process behind his photos. When I volunteered to work for Positive Exposure it was because I believed in the multifaceted vision of beauty that shone through his photography. I wasn’t prepared for how powerful it would be to experience that beauty firsthand.
Seeing Rick’s exhibit at the Genetic Alliance conference a few weeks earlier moved me enough to volunteer; but in the days leading up to the Noonan Syndrome conference my enthusiasm became clouded over by doubt. What if I was too shy to connect with people? What if I simply had nothing to say? Luckily, Positive Exposure quickly put me under its spell.
My first experience at the conference was watching the Positive Exposure presentation with families. Letting the emotions aroused by the photos wash over me once again, I looked around and saw others were experiencing the same thing. There were sniffles. One parent voiced her gratitude for the exhibit’s gentle imagery as opposed to medical textbooks, and suddenly everyone was talking about their child’s self-esteem and social issues. The pictures allowed parents to come together. Rick’s photography is a celebration of the child that comes from the same place as a parent's love; it is that perspective projected on the screen and given the authority of a public reference point. Rick offered to bring Positive Exposure to the schools to foster more acceptance, as he had for some of his photographic subjects, because the exhibit produces change.
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