Homeless men and women in Newark have been given cameras in a pilot program so we can see how they see the city.
The camera is a powerful tool for Sarah VanAllen.
It gives her a chance to forget she's homeless --even if it's only for a couple of hours a week - and to interrupt the daily grind of looking for work and permanent housing.
"It's something to escape (with), something to relax to,'' she says.
VanAllen, 49, is taking a photography class in Newark, one in which her classmates understand her plight. All of them are homeless, too.
The class is part of a program called "Perspectives" offered through Project Connect from Bridges, a homeless assistance organization, based in Summit and with a Newark office.
More than a month ago, Bridges received a $3,000 grant from the Newark Arts Council to give digital cameras to people who are homeless in Newark.
Over the next six months, Lois Bhatt, executive director of Bridges, says homeless men and women will use photography to let others see what they see in Newark. Part of the project, if the eight participants desire, would be for them to also document their lives.
To make this happen, Bridges brought in Akintola Hanif, a Newark street photographer, who is also the editor and founder of HYCIDE magazine.
Hanif has only been working with the class for about six weeks, but the HYCIDE/Bridges connection has opened up their world in ways they could not see until they started looking through the camera's viewfinder.
VanAllen, who has been homeless for more than a year, knew there were flowers in Newark's Military Park. She just didn't see them until she started taking pictures.
"I notice them a lot more now that I'm not on the move,'' says VanAllen, who lives in transitional housing.
On one of their walking trips in the field, the group hit the streets around Newark Penn Station, taking pictures of people.
Hanif was encouraging, reminding the fledgling photographers to line up their pictures and to be sure there was no clutter or unnecessary objects in their photographs. He was telling them how to focus and when to squeeze the shutter.
"You see those green dots that pop up?'' he asks. "When those are on the subject, you know you are in focus.''
Onlookers were impressed and even posed to help the novice photographers capture images.
"This is good,''says Raul Ghost, who stopped to let Karl Coston take a picture. "You're seeing Newark at one of its finest moments.''
Coston, 58, loves this class. He is not only learning, but on one of the outings, he unexpectedly got a job when the group went to Military Park. The Burg, a restaurant inside the park, hired him as dishwasher and to do light maintenance.
A former computer engineer, Coston believes this new job and hobby are the first steps to make him whole again.
After his wife died 10 years ago, he says he went into depression, then drugs. His fall was fast and hard. He didn't know how to cope and wound up on the streets for six years. Since last week, he's been bunking with a friend.
Despite the setbacks, the class has Coston looking at life differently. He found himself on his own this past Sunday, wandering through Military Park and staring at tree angles, the different shades of their leaves and wondering how he could take a meaningful picture.
"All of sudden now, the street is like a canvas,'' he says. "It's a beautiful, screwed-up canvas. There's much beauty in it, but then there's so much stuff that's screwed up in it.''
Hanif says he has seen the class members grow in their photography abilities in such a short time, but just as important, his students are enjoying themselves.
"We're laughing, we're joking, we're moving around,'' Hanif says. "The photographs are one thing, but its more of the energy exchange than anything else.''
At the end of six months, this snapshot of Newark will become a visual narrative for a book and studio exhibit in the city. Hanif will select 30 photographs and proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the homeless photographers. They get to keep the cameras to continue their artistry, but Sakinah Abdul-Hakeem, manager of Project Connect, says she 's not certain if the pilot program will continue.
Whatever happens, Roscoe Moses, 61, is looking forward to showing his work. The program, he says, has given him purpose in life, because living in a shelter for four months is not where he wants to be.
He sees himself in an apartment, with an income from landscaping jobs - work he already does. There won't be any store-bought art on the walls. All of the pictures will be images he has taken with his camera.
He likes animals, so there could be some geese - and he says the Jersey shoreline also would look good in a frame.
But there's nothing Moses likes more than well-landscaped property, with an assortment of shrubbery and flowers.
That just might be the subject of one of his photographs, too.
Barry Carter: (973) 836-4925 or bcarter@starledger.com or nj.com/carter or follow him on Twitter @BarryCarterSL