Gottography .

By Jill Carattini

Master photographer Edward Steichen once remarked that the mission of
photography is to explain man to man and each to himself—a mission he
found at once both complicated and naïve, but worth fumbling toward.
“Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper,” notes
Steichen. “The photographer begins with the finished product.” It is a
thought befitting of a scene from 2001, when the who’s who of the
country’s finest photographers volunteered their time for such a mission.
What they discovered is that when the “finished products” are the faces of
children in foster care systems across the country, photography offers the
chance of new life.

Diane Granito is the founder of the Heart Gallery, a unique program that
uses photography to help find homes for older foster children, sibling
groups, and other children who are traditionally difficult to place with
families.(1) The program started in New Mexico in 2001 at the suggestion
of a local photographer. Space was then donated by a prominent gallery in
the city, where more than 1,000 people came opening night. The photos on
exhibit were the end result of the photographers’ attempts to coax out the
unique personalities in hundreds of children—a great contrast to the
typical photos attached to a child’s file. “They look like mug shots,”
said one of the photographers. “This is an opportunity to just portray
them as kids in their environments,” said another involved. “We’re
treating this as a living, breathing project.”

Since its inception, the Santa Fe project has inspired 60 more Heart
Galleries in 45 states. In some places, the adoption rate after an
exhibit is more than double the nationwide rate of adoption from foster
care. Such photography earns a description worthy of its roots: the word
in Greek means “to write in light.”

Those who work to find foster children adoptive families are used to
rubbing up against the public perception that most foster children have
serious emotional and behavioral problems. Sometimes, though not always,
it is an accurate perception. And a picture offered in a different light
does not change the child it portrays. But an image of a troubled child
at play offers the accurate light of hope.

We all have many faces that could be portrayed to the world. If the
pictures that represented us to the world were pictures that showed our
worst sides, I wonder how different the circles of people around us would
be. There are definitely certain faces I would prefer not to have
captured in a photograph and placed in my file. While those close to me
have by now seen me in many kinds of light, it is frightening to imagine
my adoption being contingent on any one of them. Yet, our adoption as
God’s own was completed as we stood in the worst of all possible lights.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still
sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). As Christ died for the sins of
the world, he held dear even the pictures of us at our worst.

While in prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with the many reflections
of his life. As a seminary instructor he was considered a saint and a
giant. In America they made him feel like an escapist. In prison they
made him feel like a criminal. There were days when he saw himself as all
three and all the stages in between. It was in such a convolution of
images that he asked:

“Who am I?
This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me,
these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine.”(2)

Our adoption by God is our identity, the picture we hold as children until
the day when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, and
God will wipe every tear from our eyes. Neither death nor life, nor
anything else in all creation, can separate us from this love of God that
is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi
Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) http://www.heartgalleryofamerica.org/About_Heart_Gallery/History.asp
(2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York:
Touchstone), 348.

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Copyright© 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM)
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