Visual Arts - Memory Project

David Baker, Art Instructor at Southwestern Michigan College, laid the photographs of the children on the table one-by-one. Twenty-three sets of hauntingly dark eyes stare out at the viewer.

The project that Baker was referring to is the Memory Project, an endeavor that provides orphans and street children in developing countries with portraits of themselves created by American students who are enrolled in high school or college advanced art courses.

This was not an assignment for the students. They weren't required to do this. But once they heard about the project and looked at the photographs, they were excited and they all wanted to participate.

The student captured each child's likeness from a photograph. The orphaned children live in El Centro del Muchacho Trabajador (the Center of the Child Worker) in Quito, the capital of Ecuador.