The project started with 22 disposable cameras and a request; bring back the beauty you find in your world.
When the pictures came back, Sue Bracey, curator of Unseen Beauty, a new photography exhibit in Takoma Park, MD, said she was blown away by the quality of the pictures.
“I was moved,” she said.
Unseen Beauty, a photography exhibit featuring homeless and formerly-homeless photographers from the Silver Spring area, will go up at the Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, MD in mid-March.
When she first started the project, friends told Bracey that she was wasting her money.
“They told me all those cameras will end up at the liquor store,” the retired federal worker said.
Bracey got eleven cameras back the first time, and now she thinks her project has the potential to change way the homeless are viewed in her community.
“All of us can certainly recall seeing homeless people, but Unseen Beauty helps us see more than we can at first blush by showing us what the world and beauty looks like through their eyes,” said Bracey.
“The exhibit is a lens into not only what is beautiful in the eyes of people who are part of the subculture, but also into our own understanding of our neighbors without homes. It lets us know that even in blight, there is also beauty.”
The photographers benefit as well, Bracey says, One of the project’s most active participants was able to move off of the streets after obtaining an assistant chef’s certificate from the DC Culinary School and now works two jobs.
The exhibit is on display in the Cafeteria Conference Room on level LL2 in the Washington Adventist Hospital at 7600 Maple Ave. Go check it out!
Photography from the exhibit can be seen online at Unseenbeauty.org.
