The photograph that 6-year-old Logan Reed snapped near the place he once lived as a homeless child conveys not a thousand words, as the saying goes, but one plain desire.
"My hope is to have friends," says a quote printed beneath his photo, on a greeting card bearing an image of two young girls holding hands at a playground. His words convey a bittersweet longing against a sanguine snapshot taken by a boy with a fetching, toothless smile.
"Maybe because we moved around so much," said his mother, Berniesha Crosby, 22, taken aback by what had been on her son's mind, laid bare on the card. "I'm very, very overprotective of who he plays with."
Logan's is among 15 photos and quotations turned into cover art for "Pictures of Hope" cards, impressions through the lenses of cameras given to children currently or formerly homeless in Philadelphia.
They were part of a nationwide project this summer whose benefits, it is hoped, may linger for a lifetime.
Though the children had little to say about it during a recent interview, they and their mothers clearly found meaning in dreaming through a lens.
"Maybe now he'll want to become a photographer. Or see the beauty of nature. Or just want to explore," said Tierra White, 24, whose 5-year-old son, Tae'Marr Tubbs, photographed his shadow set against a jungle gym with the quote: "My hope is to be a superhero."
White, who spent a decade of her youth in group homes without parental nurturing, entered Drueding Center in April, hoping the transitional housing program would offer stability for a family that had lost an apartment.
[For more of this story, written by Maria Panaritis, go to http://articles.philly.com/201...ng-homeless-children]
Comments (0)