New Haven Independent

He still does. He has the photos to show for it.

The metal object that Tyrone Weston (at right in photo) slipped in Andre Copeland’s hand was a Coolpix digital camera, not a pistol. He told Copeland (at left in photo) to photograph the world of guns, drugs and money that he has grown up amid in the Hill neighborhood. Then he brought Copeland together with 18 other young people who were also taking pictures, to talk about how their world looked through a new lens.

Now the street outreach workers (like Weston), public-health researchers and New Haven teens who took place in this 18-month experiment are sharing some of their work with the rest of the city.

Wednesday afternoon they unveiled an exhibit of some of their photos and colleagues’ comments at the main library branch on Elm Street. After two weeks there the exhibit will travel the city.

There were photos of tombstones, Trojans, bundled Alexander Hamiltons, blunts, busts, and babies. The photos were organized into categories like “Fear,” “Guns, Drugs And Money,” “Family,” “Survival,” and “Respect.”

New Haven Family Alliance’s Barbara Tinney described the effort — “Understanding Youth Violence in New Haven: A Photovoice Project With Youth of New Haven” — to a community room full of busy people who these days get called “stakeholders.” The project was run by Tinney’s group, the New Haven Family Alliance, which oversees the city’s celebrated street outreach workers team; and Yale medical school’s Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program.

The idea was to give voice to the young people growing up amid violence that much of the city just reads about, to encourage them to deal with the problem with fresh eyes.

“We often hear about young people. We hear experts talk about the problem. We rarely hear from young people impacted by the problem,” Tinney said.

Copeland, a 19 year-old who said he “used to be a knucklehead,” met Weston one night while hanging out on a porch on Button Street. Weston was once a “knucklehead” himself. After a prison term, he turned his life around and now makes his living working with kids in trouble and negotiating gang truces.

“You want to stop the violence?” Weston asked him.

Sounded OK to Copeland. He joined up with this program Weston was selling. He got a charge out of the Coolpix camera. He found he liked taking pictures. He also enjoyed sitting around with people his own age, who have lived the same kind of life he has, and talking about what their pictures meant.

“These pictures helped clear my mind,” Copeland said. “Rather than living it,” he could view the violence and drugs around him from a distance. It looked different. “When you step back and look at it, you see things aren’t the way they” seemed.

Weston described the questions he would throw to the teens around the table: What was in your mind when you shot that picture? What do you think about in those situations?

And in the end, Copeland pointed out, “you get to keep the camera.”

Copeland’s girlfriend, Shakeira Jones, took part in the program, too.

She felt nervous at Thursday’s event, not because of the pictures of guns and drugs around her, but because of the cameras flashing and the reporters asking her questions. That was new.

Jones, who’s 18, will graduate high school this month. She also completed a certified nursing assistant program. She plans to begin studying criminal justice at Albertus in the spring; before then she plans to start working to become financially self-sufficient.

Her photos on display at the library include a person filling a Blunt.

She was proud of the photos. “I’m showing what we be around every day. You get used to it,” she said.

“This is big!” she said of the event. “And my son is in one of the pictures.” That would be 2 year-old Ke’Andre Copeland.