PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Zarinah Lomax is an uncommon documentarian of our times. She has designed dresses from yellow crime-scene tape and styled jackets with hand-painted demands like \u201cDon\u2019t Shoot<\/a>\u201d in purple, black, and gold script. Every few months, she hauls dozens of portraits of Philadelphians \u2014 vibrant, bold, bigger-than-life faces \u2014 to pop-up galleries to raise an alarm about gun violence in her hometown and America.<\/p>\n

In a storage unit, Lomax has a thousand canvasses, she estimates, mostly of young people who died from gunfire, and others of the mothers, sisters, friends, and mourners left to ask why.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose is not to make people cry,\u201d said Lomax, a Philadelphia native who has traveled to New York, Atlanta, and Miami to collaborate on similar exhibitions on trauma. \u201cIt is for families and for people who have gone through this to know that they are not forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each person \u201cis not a number. This is somebody\u2019s child. Somebody\u2019s son, somebody\u2019s daughter who was working toward something,\u201d she said. \u201cThe portraits are not just portraits. They are telling us what the consequences are for what\u2019s happening in our cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Firearms in 2020 became the No. 1 cause of death<\/a> for children and teens under 18 \u2014 from both suicides and assaults \u2014 and fresh research on the public health crisis from Harvard Medical School\u2019s Blavatnik Institute show how those losses ripple through families and neighborhoods<\/a> with significant economic and psychological costs.<\/p>\n

On June 25, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun violence a public health crisis, noting: \u201cEvery day that passes we lose more kids to gun violence. The more children who are witnessing episodes of gun violence, the more children who are shot and survive that are dealing with a lifetime of physical and mental health impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Philadelphia has recorded more than 9,000 fatal and nonfatal shootings since 2020, with about 80% of the victims identified as Black, according to the city controller<\/a>. Among those injured or dead, about 60% were age 30 or younger.<\/p>\n
Lomax has been a singular, and perhaps unlikely, force in making the statistics unforgettable. Since 2018, when a young friend poised to graduate from Penn State University was shot to death<\/a> on a Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia, Lomax has set out to support healing among those who experience violence.<\/p>\n
She launched a show on PhillyCAM, a community access media channel, to encourage people to talk about guns and opioids and grief. She organized fashion shows with local artists and families that focused on bearing witness to distress. She seized on portraiture, reaching out to local artists to memorialize the lives, not the deaths, of Philadelphia\u2019s young. She began tracking shootings on social media, in news accounts, and sometimes by word of mouth. In 2022, City Hall opened three floors<\/a> to a remarkable exhibition of lost lives, organized by Lomax and created by dozens of artists<\/a>.<\/p>\n
She recently shared the portraits at a summit sponsored by the nonprofit Brady: United Against Gun Violence<\/a> and CeaseFirePA<\/a>. The meeting offered guidance on enforcing regulations to prevent straw gun purchases that propel crime and provided data on weapon trafficking across state lines. Lomax knew the art, displayed along the stage, brought home the stakes.<\/p>\n
Look at these faces, she said. These people had promise. What happened? What can be done?<\/p>\n
Painted portraits commissioned by Zarinah Lomax. Each person \u201cis not a number. This is somebody\u2019s child. Somebody\u2019s son, somebody\u2019s daughter who was working toward something,\u201d Lomax says. \u201cThe portraits are not just portraits. They are telling us what the consequences are for what\u2019s happening in our cities.\u201d (Christine Spolar for KFF Health News)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Lomax, now 40, said the conversations she starts have purpose. Some paintings she gives to families. Others she stores for future exhibits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not what I set out to do in life,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I was growing up, I thought I\u2019d be a nurse. But I guess I am kind of nursing people this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far this year, Philadelphia has seen a drop in the number of murders, according to an online database by AH Datalytics, but ranks among the top five cities in murder count. Last year, the Harvard researchers established that communities and families are left vulnerable by gun injuries.<\/p>\n
The 2023 study led by Zirui Song, an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, examined data related to newborns through age 19. The research documented a \u201cmassive\u201d economic toll, with health care spending increasing by an average of $35,000 for survivors in the year after a shooting, and life-altering mental health challenges.<\/p>\n
Survivors of shootings and their caregivers, whether dealing with physical injuries or generalized fear, often struggle with \u201clong-lasting, invisible injuries, including psychological and substance-use disorders,\u201d according to Song, who is also a general internist at Massachusetts General Hospital. His study found that parents of injured children experienced a 30% increase in psychiatric disorders compared with parents whose children did not sustain gunshot injuries.<\/p>\n
Desiree Norwood<\/a>, who paints with acrylics, has been helping Lomax since 2021. Like all the artists, she\u2019s paid by Lomax. She has completed about 30 portraits<\/a>, always after sitting down with the subject\u2019s family. \u201cI get a backstory so I can incorporate that in the portrait,\u201d she said. \u201cSometimes we cry. Sometimes we pray. Sometimes we try to uplift each other. It is hard to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope one day I would not have to paint another portrait,\u201d said Norwood, a mother of five children. \u201cThe idea that Zarinah has had so many exhibits, with numerous people who have died, is scary and heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Doughty<\/a>, a self-taught digital artist, was among those who wanted to help to \u201chonor and to offer a better look at who these people were.\u201d Doughty, a city employee who works at a courthouse, may be best known within Philadelphia for a series of fanciful murals in which he has grouped famous natives such as Will Smith, Grace Kelly, and Kevin Hart.<\/p>\n
He has produced about 150 portraits on his iPad and laptop, working with Lomax\u2019s nonprofit group, The Apologues, to best match a face with a phrase, embedded in the scene, that telegraphs the lost potential of youth.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the beginning it was hard to do,\u201d said Doughty, who works from family photographs. \u201cI look and I think: They are kids. Just kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
One time, he received a text from Lomax seeking a portrait of a rapper he recognized from art and music shows. Another day, he opened an email to find a photo of a man he knew from high school. In May, Doughty shared on Instagram<\/a> his work process for a portrait of Derrick Gant, a rapper with the stage name Phat Geez, who was gunned down in March<\/a>. The killing happened a few weeks after the rapper released \u201cNo Gunzone,\u201d<\/a> a music video referring to an Instagram account that promotes anti-violence efforts in the city.<\/p>\n
Doughty, 33, who grew up in the Nicetown section of north Philadelphia, wryly noted: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t so nice.\u201d Lomax\u2019s exhibitions, he said, allow families, even neighborhoods, to sort through sorrow and pain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to the last one and a mother came up and said, \u2018Did you draw my child\u2019s portrait?\u2019 She just fell into my arms, crying. It was such a moment,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd a reminder on why we do what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
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