Award winning fashion photographer Rick Guidotti worked in Milan, Paris and New York shooting pictures of the world's most beautiful people, until a chance encounter on a Manhattan street changed everything.

Rick saw a stunning girl at the bus stop and marveled at her pale skin and white hair. Upon returning home he searched for information about albinism and other genetic differences, and was shocked to see the sad and dehumanizing photos in the medical literature.

He proposed — and Life magazine accepted – a feature photo essay called Redefining Beauty showing women like the girl he saw at the bus stop. In 1998 he stopped working in the fashion industry and launched the non-profit Positive Exposure.

"These kids need to be seen as their parents see them, as their friends see them, as valuable and positive parts of society, as beautiful."

According to the website, "The photos give people the permission to see beauty and interpret beauty in their own right. Not to see beauty that is dictated by industry's ideas of what is acceptable."

Exhibits of his images now grace galleries in the same cities he once photographed super models.

What started with photographs, though, has grown into a wide variety of programs created to empower people living with difference – and to educate the world around them.

(WATCH the video below or READ the story at NBC News)