May 3, 2014

Photography as a Healing Art

For the last 6 months I have been documenting the women of Welcome Home Ministries, a re-entry program at Las Colinas Detention Center. These women live in a separate FAIR dorm – Future Achievers In Re-entry – which is a dedicated housing facility that provides a safe and secure, structured environment for learning a process of change. The goal is to help them change their way of life and better equip them for a healthy transition back into the community. I personally have witnessed incredible transformation.

I asked these women to take portraits of each other as a way of seeing themselves in a different light. When one holds a camera in their hands and looks through the lens, they are free of the past and focus on the now.

I wanted these women to be able to capture a moment in time that would help them move forward by giving them a chance to reflect and reveal another dimension of themselves. They are women who have made bad decisions in their lives, but they can now smile and feel happy, beautiful and full of hope for a better future.

I was very impressed in how serious they took this assignment and I am so excited to share some of their work.

Art is our one true global language. It knows no nation, it favors no race, and it acknowledges no class. It speaks to our need to reveal, heal, and transform. It transcends our ordinary lives and lets us imagine what is possible. —Richard Kamler