A newborn baby lies sleeping on its stomach under a small blanket, its little toes exposed.
The sight might bring a smile to some people’s faces; others might stop to reminisce about their own children. But Naperville photographer Pat Van Doren reaches for a camera. She sees the little toes as an image that might help her help the homeless in Illinois.
“What I do is I’m a photographer,” Van Doren explains. “I can take a photo and put it in someone’s face.” She smiles wickedly. “And it’s un-American not to like little piggies.”
Now those little piggies are on buttons and T-shirts, and if Van Doren has her way they’ll be on billboards too, reminding people that even babies, like this 2-day-old born at Hesed House in Aurora, can be homeless.
“My focus is homeless children, and there it was,” Van Doren says. “Those little baby feet sticking out of the blanket said something to me.”
Van Doren is on a mission. She wants to stop the cycle of homelessness that for some families has lasted for three generations. She wants to wake up people, make them reach out and help.
“There’s a part in `Mary Poppins’ where the father comes in and says, `Dear, it’s about the children,’ ” Van Doren says. “Well, that’s the whole thing. It’s about the children, and people are not listening. If we start with the children, reach the child, we can nip it in the bud.
“I started with the mentally ill,” Van Doren says of her involvement with the homeless. “Many of them were too frightened to come inside a shelter. Some of them froze to death. (President Ronald) Reagan opened the doors (of mental institutions by cutting funding for them), and the people had no life skills to go out and live. People were penalized for having that disease.”
Van Doren was drawn to the Aurora shelter four years ago after having been sent there on a photo assignment for the Naperville Sun, where she works as a staff photographer. She joined the board of directors of Hesed House’s PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter) program in early ’94.
She began spending much of her free time at the shelter, talking to people and taking photos. Three years ago, Van Doren conceived the idea of pulling her best photos together into an exhibit. With the work of two other local photographers, Karen Kerchove and Jim Svehla, she developed “Spirit on the Streets,” a traveling exhibit about the homeless that was displayed in the State Capitol in Springfield.
“This photo exhibit was to show the spirit of the people on the streets, no matter what state they were in,” Van Doren explains. “It has been a very effective exhibit, bringing more volunteers into (PADS programs), increasing the awareness, letting people know there are all kinds of homeless.”
To get her photos, Van Doren admits, she has had to invade people’s space.
“But . . . at Hesed House I never take photos without asking,” she says. “Half of what I do is conversation, but because I’m visual, I’m also clicking my camera.”
Michelle, one of the mothers whose children Van Doren has photographed at Hesed House, says some of the other parents don’t want their children photographed.
“But I think every little bit helps,” Michelle says. “Those photographs definitely make a difference. I’ve seen the difference. I answer the doors here, and people come asking for cookbooks and T-shirts with her photos on them. It will help me and others, too. It kind of opens people’s eyes a little more.”
Van Doren’s focus on homeless children, her campaign It’s About the Children, is a perfect follow-up to other previous grass-roots campaigns, says Diane P. Nilan, president of the Illinois Coalition to End Homelessness and PADS program director at Hesed House and associate director of Hesed House.
“This focuses on a really vulnerable part of the homeless population,” Nilan says. “Homeless children are greatly at risk from some of the policy decisions coming out of Washington this spring. I think this campaign (It’s About the Children) is going to grow, as good things do.”
For her volunteer work, the Illinois Coalition to End Homelessness selected Van Doren its Journalist of the Year for 1995. Van Doren says it’s the image that counts, not the photographer, but Nilan says there would be no such image without Van Doren.
“If all board members were like Pat, not-for-profit organizations would be more effective,” Nilan says. “Pat has the talent and sensitivity, and she’s willing to do the hard work to get the shot that matters. She’s also fueled by a compassion that doesn’t let her rest until something better happens.”
One of the photos Van Doren took at the shelter is of a boy named Charlie, his boots on the wrong feet, his shirt sticking out and his arms clutching a big furry cat. The picture helped move a bill through the state legislature that guarantees homeless children the right to go to school in the district where they once lived, says State Rep. Mary Lou Cowlishaw (R-Naperville). It was informally named Charlie’s Bill.
“If you could see how charming Charlie was, you couldn’t fail to respond with warmth and attention,” says Cowlishaw, who with State Rep. Tom Cross (R-Oswego) sponsored the bill.
Cowlishaw credits Van Doren’s photographs with helping get the legislation passed.
“It is the kind of legislation that has a lot of ramifications,” Cowlishaw says. “It was not an easy task, but I had wonderful help, and I think what captured people’s attention were Pat’s photographs. By the time that bill was on its third reading, it was no longer the Education for Homeless Children’s Bill. It was Charlie’s Bill.”
Nilan agrees that Van Doren’s photo had a tremendous impact.
“We used that picture to adorn every press release, every card,” Nilan says. “We’re all people. We need images. This was an honest-to-goodness homeless child.”
Because this particular bill had a face with it, it had personal impact, it was compelling, Cowlishaw says.
“What Pat does is compelling,” she continues. “It’s not just a proficiency for operating a camera but a feeling for what is appropriate to the message. Not everyone with a camera can capture the spirit. It’s a special kind of vision, a gift.
“You know that song `You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings’? She is the wind beneath every homeless child’s wings.
“She has already earned her halo.”
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The Coalition to End Homelessness can be reached at Box 1267, Elgin, Ill. 60121.
