Georgia - A girl with Down's Syndrome


  • Photographer
    Yoshitada Okubo
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    JWT
  • Date of Photograph
    01/APR/2009 - 05/MAY/2009

Georgia Leggat is 16-year-old girl with severe Down’s syndrome, living in a farm in Kent. What I photographed is a person, a girl, not a Down's Syndrome. It is a life.

Story

I photographed a girl (Georgia) with severe Down's Syndrome. What I am questioning here is people's perception/gaze. Is this abusive? dignified? Morally right or wrong? but why?

The French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze stated:

'We will say of pure immanence that it is a life, and nothing more. It is no immanence to life, but the immanence that is in nothing else is itself a life. A life is the immanence of immanence, absolute immanence: it is complete power, complete beatitude.'

Indeed, people tend to see her Down’s syndrome before her as a person. People do forget that, before ‘being’, her life is as precious as everybody else. If she was born without Down’s syndrome, would she have been somebody else or would her parents have loved her more or less? Absolutely not. What might have changed would have been people’s perception and viewers’ gaze.

I photographed a girl with Down’s syndrome but what I really photographed here is a life, nothing more or less.

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