Photo project of 51 mothers who have lost children to gun violence will debut in Saunders Park

Around midnight, Sept. 29, 2018, Lisa Harmon sat inside Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and prayed her son would survive after being gunned down just a few doors away from her Southwest Philadelphia home.

A short time later, doctors at one of the city’s busiest trauma centers told her that they’d done all they could.

Alan Gray, a 34-year-old father of four, was pronounced dead the next day.

After Harmon walked out of the West Philadelphia hospital on North 39th Street, she was careful never to venture near the neighborhood again, the painful memories were just too much to bear.

But Thursday afternoon, after years of purposely avoiding the area, Harmon will be at Saunders Park, right across the street from the hospital where her son died.

There, she and other mothers who lost children to gun violence will gather to help debut a photo exhibit that will be at the park through the summer.

“It’s going to be hard,” Harmon said. “I’m mentally preparing myself, but it’s important for me to be there.”

I told readers about the project earlier this year. Kathy Shorr, a New York City-based photographer, spent nine months photographing 51 mothers, including Harmon, whose children were killed by guns in the Philadelphia area.

Shorr, who has focused her camera on gun violence in the past, was encouraged to photograph the mothers by a Philadelphia resident whom she had encountered during an earlier project.

Once Shorr met the women, she was committed to using her camera to tell as many of their stories as she could.

“SHOT: We the Mothers” includes portraits both somber and searing that Shorr hopes highlight the enduring grief of the mothers, and grows into a call to action and activism.

“I think of it as a template for America,” Shorr said of the project and the violence plaguing cities across the country. As of July 13, there have been 1,283 shootings in Philadelphia; 264 of those were fatal.

The photos will be displayed on large vinyl panels affixed to the iron fence that surrounds the park. Some panels will include heart-wrenching words from mothers, including those of Samantha DiNubile, whose 16-year-old son Salvatore “Tankie” DiNubile was killed in 2017 alongside Caleer Miller, also 16: “For those who stand on solid ground, you will never know the feeling of being trapped in the quicksand and the pain of existing without your heart.”

Shorr photographed DiNubile inside “Tankie’s Tavern,” the family’s South Philadelphia restaurant named after the teen.

The location of the exhibit, in the 300 block of Saunders Avenue, was an intentional choice by Mural Arts Philadelphia, which is funding the exhibit with the support of the city and the People’s Emergency Center, a West Philadelphia nonprofit that offers aid to people experiencing homelessness.

“We see violence as a public health crisis that is complex, multilayered, and demands all our attention,” said Jane Golden, executive director of Mural Arts Philadelphia. “Location is so important because violence disrupts our world and our stories of who we are.”

She is right about that, and for that reason I hope the exhibit is showcased indefinitely around the city. Move it from neighborhood to neighborhood, especially to places and spaces where people might still assume they are immune from such violence.

Put the portraits on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, or on any number of Center City streets where some might try to convince themselves that they can’t experience this kind of loss.

The exhibit will kick off at 11 a.m. on Thursday with a few words from Shorr and mothers who — even through their tears and pain — urged Shorr to please take their pictures.

Now, it’s our turn to not look away.