The real story: doctors told him it’s a “sporadic birth defect,” which Connolly interprets as they have no idea why he was born without legs.

“My parents made the decision to not put me in a wheelchair or a hospital,” he says. “They just took me home.” He wears what he calls a “boot” on the bottom of his torso, which keeps his posture straight and protects him from the ground, like a shoe.

Connolly traveled alone for half of his three months abroad. The only snag was when he got hit by a car in Bosnia. He fell off his board and bruised his ribs.

Connolly is used to doing things that people might assume he’s incapable of. He won a silver medal in the 2007 X Games’ monoski event; the money helped finance his trip. But don’t act too impressed, says James Joyce, Connolly’s film professor at MSU.

“When I want to agitate him, I tell him he’s my hero and he hates that,” Joyce says. “He absolutely hates that. What he wants is for you to respect him for his work and not for `overcoming his challenges’.”VSA arts brought “The Rolling Exhibition” to the Kennedy Center. Says Stephanie Moore, the organization’s director of visual arts. “I think his work comes from a place of empowerment. It’s a great first-person narrative of a person with disability, but he’s a talented photographer in his own right.”