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From Modest Heroes, Major Deeds
MARY BROWN: The co-founder of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, center, tickles Antoine Harmon, 8, right, drawing laughter from Antonio Cook, 8. She works with about 200 boys weekly to try to provide them with artistic inspiration and a sense of beauty.
(By Michael Williamson -- The Washington Post)
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"A lot of my life involves our boys," says Brown, 44, who has no biological children and grew up in New Orleans with two parents who loved her very much. Her parents and her background, she understands, have taught her everything she needs to know about helping boys whose lives have been starkly different from hers.
"I know," she says, "how love works."
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In the District, Portraits of Caring
The idea just came to Tony Brunswick.
Last year, the 33-year-old photographer, whose day job is director of programs for a national network of community centers, thought: Maybe the District's homeless families would like their portraits taken.
So he started a sign-up sheet at D.C. Village, which was then the city's largest family shelter. He planned his first shoot for a Sunday afternoon. Forty families showed up.
Since then, over the course of four or five Sundays, he has taken portraits of more than 150 families.
He has posed mothers with their children, a father with his 10-month-old baby, entire families who appeared much more nuclear than displaced. And as he worked, many would tell him things such as: "This is the very first picture I've had with me and my child."
"Homelessness is a tough life," Brunswick says. "People have no stability, and there's no sense of permanence. . . . You only get to travel with what you can carry, and the rest you leave behind until you get more stable again.
"Portraits and pictures," he adds, "are still a pretty privileged experience for some people."
After snapping 50 to 100 digital pictures of each family, he and a few other volunteers culled them to four or six shots, which were put into 4-by-6 and 5-by-7 frames.
When he gave the families their portraits, "the reaction," he says, "was so intense.
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