Being different is difficult. It’s hard to accept yourself and see your own beauty, when noone else sees it, and the only reason is that it escapes the rigid, unrealistic frame of appearance imposed by modern society.

For many decades, fashion magazines, catwalks and television set the ideals of female beauty. For nearly twenty years, this role has been taken over mainly by social media, which create artificial, idealized and often untrue canons of beauty. Due to the widespread availability of the Internet, these media have a huge impact on generations of young women and men, setting trends in attractiveness based on a specific type of appearance features. This caused a one-dimensional perception of beauty with no room for diversity. This situation led to the exclusion from the circle of attractiveness of people who definitely diverge from the restrictive canons, determining the negative perception of themselves mainly among young people, but also by older people.

Through my project, I want to show the diversity and multidimensionality of human beauty. Both women and men are imposed standards of appearance that are sometimes very difficult to meet, and when they do not meet them, they are socially excluded to some extent – due to their weight, illness, disability, age or even the way they decorate their bodies. For each of the people participating in the project, the photo session was a challenge, especially because it exposed parts of their bodies that they considered ugly and unattractive. My task was to show how beautiful people they are, and the imperfections of their bodies only emphasize the individual, unique character of their beauty. Looking at myself through my eyes, through the photographs I took, allowed them to see in themselves what was difficult for them to see before – beautiful, mysterious and brave women who found the courage to break down barriers. Participation in the project allowed them to accept themselves as they are, although it was not easy. P. wanted several times to confirm that I really wanted to photograph a “fat woman”, as she described herself, R. showed her mastectomy scar as a support for other women fighting breast cancer, T. had been hiding her lack of a forearm since she was a child and it was difficult for her to pose without a prosthesis, E., who was born with Treacher Collins Syndrome, struggled with exclusion because of her appearance from an early age, E. does not agree that mature women become invisible in society. Each of these women left a piece of themselves in the project and I am grateful to each of them for their trust. We also can’t forget about D., who proves that who you are depends only on you.

The project aims to show people of all ages and genders that there is beauty and strength in diversity.