Photographer Who Transformed Disabled Kids Into Justice League Planning New Project With Bullied Children

Photographer Josh Rossi made headlines last year when his photos of sick and disabled children reimagined as the super heroes of Justice League went viral. Now, he’s giving bullied kids the superhero treatment.

In a recent episode of “The Uplifting Content Podcast with Ione Butler,” Rossi revealed that following the massive success and attention his Justice League Kids project got, he’s turning his lens towards creating an anti-bullying campaign.

Basically, we’re working on a bully project, an anti-bullying campaign,” Rossi said. “We’re doing something similar to the last shoot, but it’s going to be times ten so we’re photographing 14 kids that have just been severely bullied. I mean, to the point of wanting to commit suicide. I can’t believe this stuff actually happens. People are telling these kids that they need to die, they sign petitions at school, like these are kids in Utah, other places, California, that we know of and, friends of friends, and people in school are actually signing petitions for one person to die. How crazy is that?”

Rossi went on to explain that some of the extreme bullying kids have experienced has already impacted the planned photoshoot revealing that one of the kids chosen for the project had, tragically, ended her own life.

“I knew of a girl that I was going to reach out to her and we found out, this is super sad, we found out that she had committed suicide two weeks previous,” he said. “I had wanted her in our project. I was like, I wanted to shoot this girl and help her out. She was a cute girl and people were saying that she was ugly, and she should kill herself and she actually did it and so it’s super sad and it’s just a really sad thing that’s going on this bullying, and it’s going on behind the scenes.

Last year, after positive feedback on a children’s Wonder Woman-themed photoshoot Rossi began receiving comments from parents and others about sick children who were the real heroes. It prompted Rossi to take on a Justice League-themed series comprised of children suffering from life-threating illnesses or challenging disabilities.

“I decided that I needed to find the real super heroes out there and do a photo shoot of them,” Rossi told Babble. The project quickly went viral, attracting more than 100 million online views according to CNN and even got the attention of Justice League director Zack Snyder who was so moved by the project that he arranged a special screening of the DC Films feature for all six of the kids complete with a special red carpet for the kids to walk as the real heroes. Now, Rossi hopes that the anti-bullying project will get the same kind of attention his Justice League kids project did.

“So, this is a huge project,” he said. “We have celebrity pushes and it’s going to be massive. We just want to change perception of bullying and make these bullied kids feel confident, feel strong and put a message out there.”