Description
The Portrait Positive campaign challenged perceptions of beauty through a series of striking images featuring 16 women with visible differences. The campaign was a collaboration with world-renowned photographer Rankin and designer Steven Tai in partnership with Changing Faces UK.
The women took part in the photoshoot with Rankin and during London Fashion Week 2018 some of the women appeared on the runway alongside models without visible differences, wearing pieces from Steven Tai’s new collection. The campaign received global media attention and brought the fashion industry face-to-face with its narrow standards of beauty.
The Portrait Positive series was then transformed into a publication, Portrait Positive: Changing the way you see, celebrating all of the amazing women and their stories.
Speaking about the incredible campaign in 2018, Rankin said: “Living with a visible difference you are literally judged by your appearance and compared to what I think is a fake idea of what it is to be beautiful or even ‘normal’. The only way to shift this perception is to talk about it and face it head on. Our amazing subjects are dealing with these issues with grace, dignity and strength. It was an absolute honour to work with them and try to create a discussion around what it is to be beautiful. To me they are all unique.”