Photo students help needy families capture memories

SALT LAKE CITY — Trinity Nicholson blinks as the light flashes. Nestled in her mom's arm, Dad inches away, 2-week-old Trinity just participated for the first time in a beloved ritual: the family portrait.

What's unexpected is the setting — the Road Home family homeless shelter.

Photography students from the Art Institute of Salt Lake City came up with the idea to take the photos and give each family a print, beautifully framed by Roberts Crafts, as a way of providing hope, said Dave DeAustin, who teaches photography at the institute.

And the students win, too, DeAustin noted, getting great experience taking the portraits.

Friday afternoon, as student photographers grouped homeless families on each side of a giant paper backdrop, posing parents and children, it was noisy, even boisterous. More than 40 families of the 60 staying at the shelter had signed up for a photo shoot, the "appointments" set 15 minutes apart, said Ashley Farmer, the shelter's volunteer coordinator.

Talitha Bappos was busy disengaging her son, Gage, 20 months, who was crying because he'd gotten his shirt button caught between two bricks in the shelter's atrium.

A 3-year-old named Miracle was twirling her braids and interviewing a TV cameraman about what he was doing, while her grandma, Gloria Fernandez, waited patiently for what would be their first almost-formal portrait.

Next in line, Yvette Gonzalez hugged her son, 1-year-old Emmanuel. Gonzalez was trying to help her sister, Sherri Zamarrron, who was trying without much success to get Adrianna, 2, to smile as the cameras flashed. When it was Gonazalez's turn, Emmanuel needed no such prompting.

For most of the families, the portraits will be a first home decoration. Nearly all of them are part of a "rapid rehousing" program that provides a few months' rent assistance to help them stabilize and become self-sufficient. Some of the families will be in apartments within a matter of days.

"Our goal is to keep them out of the shelter," Farmer said. "The best place to work out the issues (that lead to being homeless) isn't here. It's in their own home."

Mario and Beth Aericko and their son, Patrick, 7, have lived in the shelter for three weeks. They have an appointment set up that they hope will lead to getting in the rehousing program. In the meantime, it has been a long time since they had a family picture, Beth Aericko said. They couldn't stop grinning.

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