Sarah Coleman

In a homeless shelter in Dayton, Ohio, three young men gather nervously to pose for photographs. There’s Rob, who wears two wool caps over each other like a helmet on his head, and Antwuan, whose crisp white shirt signals his determination to rise above his circumstances. The third young man, who introduces himself only as Agent Thunder, is an aspiring poet and artist. He stares at the camera through wide, weary brown eyes that make him seem older than his eighteen years.

For Larry Price, the man behind the camera, the shoot feels familiar. The Olympus Visionary photographer, who has won two Pulitzer Prizes, has a track record of documenting social causes in the United States. While a staff photographer at the Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1980s, he spent six months photographing inside a fetid, dangerous housing project – a story that led local government to demolish the project two years later.

Today, though, Price isn’t working on behalf of a news organization. Instead, he’s one of over a hundred photographers nationwide taking part in Do1Thing, a nonprofit initiative geared toward helping homeless teens. He and his wife Debbie, a veteran news reporter, have donated their services to the endeavor because, says Price, “It’s a good project that’s going to raise money for a really serious social cause.”

Unusually, Price got his invitation to join the project through Facebook, the very same day he created his account on the social networking site. “I was just chatting with friends, and within hours, I got an invitation to be part of the project,” he recalls. Najlah Feanny, co-founder of Do1Thing, says that social networking played a big part in getting the project off the ground. “We’re on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, every major networking site that’s out there,” she says.

Once on board, Price approached his local shelter, Daybreak. “We had to talk to them several times before they agreed to let us in,” recalls Debbie Price. “That’s only right – they were being protective of the kids.”

Sure enough, Agent Thunder, Antwuan and Rob aren’t used to having their portraits shot, and they’re guarded at first. Gradually, though, they loosen up. Sitting in the shelter’s spartan white rooms, they slowly tell their stories. There are common themes: abusive parents, foster homes, a lot of yelling and screaming. Nights spent out on the street, and the shame and fear this caused.

"I didn’t want people that I knew to see me on the street," says Antwuan of the months he spent sleeping in a park. "When I’d run into someone, I’d pretend I was just hanging, you know." Rob talks about sleeping on a filthy mattress, carrying two rocks tied into a sock as protection, and not daring to apply for jobs because he smelled so bad.

“These kids have been desperate from an early age – that’s the sad reality,” says Price, who now works as Director of Photography at Cox Ohio publishing, which owns the Dayton Daily News and eight other papers in Ohio. “They want things we all want, especially some semblance of security and a decent family life.” Debbie, who’s writing narratives to accompany her husband’s images, adds, “They want to make something of their lives.”

The day after the shoot, as Price works on post-processing his images and uploading them to Do1Thing.org, dozens of photo stories about homeless teens are going live on the site. Writers are live-blogging from homeless shelters across the country, and the site’s core message – that anyone can do one thing to alleviate homelessness – is having an effect. Clothes, food and toiletries pour in to the shelters.

“Homelessness is such a big problem that nobody can give you one answer,” says Feanny, a former Newsweek contract photographer. “But what if everybody could do just one thing? It could be donating clothes, mentoring, or getting someone a job.” Clearly, the creatives contributing to the project have led by example. It only took a few weeks after Feanny put out the call before dozens of photographers and videographers – including 32 Pulitzer Prize winners – had signed up to donate their services.

The site features some wonderfully soulful, nuanced projects. Price, for example, decided to create a classic look by shooting in black and white, and the shelter’s spare décor and soft window light helped him create clean, elegant compositions. “Digital black and white has a really creamy tonality if you handle it properly,” he says. Thanks to a feature on his Olympus E-30 camera, he was able to preview each shot in black and white on the Live View screen, and the camera’s image stabilization system meant that he could hand-hold the camera while using shutter speeds as low as 1/15th of a second.

With widespread downsizing in the news media, projects like Do1Thing are gaining ground. Many photographers have turned to nonprofit projects to continue doing work they love, and Feanny says she’d like to see the photography industry stepping up to underwrite organizations like hers. “This is the wave of social action photography for the future,” she says.

Right now, though, it’s all about helping kids like Antwuan, Rob and Agent Thunder. Price is ecstatic that, after one of his portraits of Antwuan recently appeared in a 4-page spread in People magazine, Antwuan was offered a full scholarship from Sinclair Community College in Dayton. This is one of many examples of kids being helped as a result of the project, says Feanny, and it proves the talent of Price and others "to mold a story that will push people to action."

For Price, knowing his image changed a human life is wonderful. “A lot of these issues go unnoticed until you put a human face on them,” he says. “When you get those rare moments when you can turn a lens on a problem, and tell a story through composition, body posture, light and expression – well, then you just can’t refuse.”

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Source: http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/cp/olympus/feature/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003951266

To find out more about the Do1Thing [For Homeless Youth] project, please go to their website: http://www.do1thing.org/