I am an artist/researcher working on a public awareness project based on the experience of people with Albinism. My project is based on my concerns about how a person can simultaneously be visible and invisible in a society that declares itself multicultural and liberal; and the consequences of the treatment (sometimes unfair) to those who ‘appear’ different. Because I am from Southern Africa, where there is a noticeable population of people with Albinism, I never found it so difficult to get in touch and talk to people with Albinism. However, since my move to NYC, I have found it incredibly problematic to find people with Albinism. Please, if some one has any suggestions or may want to help with my project, I would be absolutely thrilled. I will also compensate $50/hour for anyone willing to participate. The project is very simple, I will need to take only one portrait photograph of a sitter with Albinism, and then interview the person - yet the interview will not take long at all, and can also be done via email since I am aware, people have busy schedules. Additionally, the sitter will have all rights as to how the image is used, and also I will be displaying the project in a private exhibition space (and not a public space) so as not to infringe upon any individual's rights and privacy. I am aware that this may seem like a problematic project, especially since it involves visual images but this is something that I feel has to be done, and an awareness of difference, and how people treat each other according to this difference is fundamental. I use difference here in relation to Fixity in the ‘ideological construction of otherness’; thus fixity is the cultural/racial sign of difference. Fixity paradoxically ‘connotes rigidity and an unchanging order as well as disorder, degeneracy and daemonic repetition.’ Within the aesthetic objectification of the individual ‘other’ – only the exterior is the essential sum total of the meanings signified around the attributes of the other. Therefore I aim to reveal and hopefully dissolve all the stereotyping, fixity, and stigma connected to people with Albinism.
Thank you and I look forward to any kind of help I can get.
Please contact me at maramax54@yahoo.com