Internationally acclaimed commercial photographer Blair Bunting was diagnosed with autism as an adult. When he’s not photographing elite athletes, famous celebrities or rare automobiles, he’s often capturing one of his true passions: the trains that roll by not far from his home in Flagstaff, Arizona. In 2023, he was asked to explore a subject far less down-to-earth—space. The U.S. Department of Defense sent him on a mission in a Lockheed U2 spy plane to photograph earth and an accompanying plane. One of those images is destined for display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Blair Bunting’s Journeys, Neurodivergence and Belonging on view at ASU’s College of Health Solutions, 550 N. 3rd St., Phoenix, AZ 85004
The ways people interact with places and systems are adaptable and subject to change. Utilizing his lived experience on the autism spectrum, photographer and statistician Stuart Neilson, Ph.D., of Cork, Ireland, explores how people interact in public spaces—with each other, nature and inanimate objects.
Neilson’s Picturing Inclusivity, produced in collaboration with Chapel Haven Schleifer Center in New Haven, Connecticut, is on exhibit in the first-floor lobby of University of Arizona’s Health Sciences Education Building, 435 N. 5th St. in Phoenix, Arizona.
These extraordinary portraits by renowned photographer Scott Baxter celebrate an America open to hiring individuals with autism and/or intellectual/developmental disabilities. The deep pride and dignity these individuals feel in their work shines through in Scott’s powerful black-and-white portraits. As he took one of the photographs, he pulled his eye away from the camera, turned to those on hand and said, “This is what’s right in life.”
Scott Baxter’s Be Open on exhibit in the University of Arizona Health Sciences Education Building, 435 N. 5th St., Phoenix, AZ 85004, fifth floor.
Every year since 2023, award-winning illustrator Bob Case has captured the essence of Dimensions®, First Place Global’s annual Symposium, with a single, powerful storytelling illustration. Regarded for his detailed, engraved style, Bob’s artistic contributions have masterfully and beautifully summed up the many ways First Place and its collaborators are helping transform the lives of individuals with autism and/or intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD).
