Gallery to help kids find families

The truth about adoption is that most adoptive parents want a little girl, the younger the better, age 5 tops.

That's why the typical foster child waiting for a new family is an 11-year-old boy.

Most likely he's been in the system for several years already — "in the system" being shorthand for the fact that he has probably been shuttled from one foster family to another, or on a tiring, even more disappointing journey from foster care to kin to his biological parents for a stint that didn't work out, then back to foster care.

So this year the Adoption Exchange, an adoption recruitment agency for the state's Division of Child and Family Services, is trying something different to recruit potential adoptive families: professional portraits. The hope is that the photographs — not the typical mug shot in each child's folder but something charming and well-lit — will accomplish what plain old pleading has not.

The pictures, taken and donated by professional photographers, show the children and teens at their best. As the co-founders of Heart Gallery New Jersey told "Inside Photography" magazine, "Some people said this was just advertising — making these kids look better than they look. But we just wanted to make them look the way they deserve to look, like kids who come from a loving home."

The first annual Utah Heart Gallery will open Friday, Nov. 4, at Trolley Square. Portraits of 24 children will be on display. The Adoption Exchange hopes that prospective adoptive parents will attend, and that local businesses and individuals will donate funds to help take the gallery statewide.

"We have zero budget for the project," said Kathy Searle, Adoption Exchange coordinator. A group of local volunteers, under the direction of Rajathi Noel of the agency, has brought the Heart Gallery to Utah. There are currently 60 other such galleries in the United States.

Among the smiling faces in the first-ever Utah Heart Gallery exhibit will be Darion, a Utah ninth-grader. Two portraits, taken and donated by Salt Lake photographer Quinn Farley, capture Darion's enthusiasm. In one, he stands proudly in his football uniform.

Darion has lived in four foster homes and has attended four different schools in the past three years. He and his sister were taken away from their mother. "I think I'd like to stay in one spot," said Darion. His ideal family would include a mom, dad and sister who would all love to camp and fish.