LIVING WITH ALBINISM

HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT PEOPLE LIVING WITH ALBINISM? Albinism is caused by a defective gene that produces and distributes melanin (a dark pigment) throughout the body. It's passed down through generations in families, from parents to children. If you carry the albinism gene, it may be passed on to your child. The reduced melanin means albinos have extremely light skin and are prone to sunburn. Their eyesight is also very poor, verging on near blindness and light-coloured hair. Hollywood would always present Albinos as the 'baddies' in their movies, which also helped persevere the stigma of Albinos. In Africa, many were murdered because of their supposed 'lucky' body parts or subversively because they are presumed to bring bad luck to their communities. Many of my Personal Photo projects connect me to cultural or situations around societal issues, so once I took a deeper look into the circumstances and related problems that surround individuals suffering from this unfortunate disease, I knew that I had to focus my lens on the subject of Albinism. I love producing long-term projects on subjects, topics or issues that I or we as a society know very little about, but it's also something that's not a million miles away from us; we all see people with Albinism in our communities from time to time. This particular photo project took three years to complete and saw me travel around the UK, researching, locating, approaching, and finally photographing as many people as I could. I met some really amazing people on this project, broadening on the heroic, all with their own horrendous experiences and stories, not only about their condition but also socially, from the stigmatisation and bullying to a few near-death experiences.