‘Unique is the new cool. Inclusion is the new cool’
Professional photo shoot focused on child models with special needs
Parents of children with disabilities worked to help the public recognize the beauty in diversity with a special photo shoot on Saturday.
“I want them to see their beauty. We all have our own different beauty, we are all different,” said Maria Jordan MacKeigan, a mother of a three-year-old girl with Down syndrome and organizer of the Changing the Face of Beauty photo shoot.
For the first time in Canada, parents were invited to take part in the Changing the Face of Beauty Head Shot Clinic, where 20 child models with special needs were professionally photographed at the Wheelbarrow Gardener at 6 Renault Crescent in St. Albert.
Changing the Face of Beauty is a non-profit organization based in the United States that is working to promote inclusion of people with disabilities in advertising and media by creating an online stock photo album of professional portraits.
MacKeigan said it was important for her daughter to participate because she wants to change the perception of people with disabilities and normalize their full participation in the community.
“I want her included because I want people to see her in a different light. Right now, sometimes we get stares, sometimes we get the negativity that comes to us and I want (her inclusion) to be normal. I want it to be the new normal,” MacKeigan said.
MacKeigan said people likely look at her daughter differently because they aren’t used to seeing people with disabilities.
“I want her to grow up seeing people who look like her, who act like her and who are like her, (people) who are different, so unique is the new cool,” said MacKeigan. “Inclusion is the new cool.”
Two professional photographers followed each model around the studio, working to capture the essence of each child as much as their image.
Each model walked away with as many as six professional head shots that will be added to the Changing the Face of Beauty stock photo database and also used in portfolios.
While the experience left MacKeigan’s daughter feeling like “a little star,” she hopes their efforts have a more profound effect on those who see these photos in the future.
“I want them to see their beauty. We all have our own different beauty, we are all different,” MacKeigan said.