UNMC lab tech’s photo exhibit spotlights social ills

For a man whose career is in sterilization, Atiim Jones doesn’t mind getting dirt under his fingernails.

Photograph by Atiim Jones

Jones, a lab assistant at the autoclaving facility in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Durham Research Towers, is having a collection of his photography shown at the Everything Electric Gallery this month.

The exhibit, “Selections from Crossroads,” consists of 14 photos Jones took of people in and around the Old Market, people on the fringe of society — the homeless, alcoholics, drug abusers.

Jones has been working on “The Crossroads Project” for five years, and the photos being exhibited represent a microscopic sample of the quarter million or so photographs he’s taken during that time.

“I hang out in the Old Market, and I take street portraits of strangers, people I don’t know, in an artistic style,” he said. “There are no boundaries. These are people of all races, of all ages, they come from all different backgrounds, and they all have a different story to tell.”

Jones said he’s not interested in money or notoriety. His focus is educating people, both his subjects on the variety of resources that are available to them, and the public about poverty here in Omaha, about disparities in society regarding adults, children, senior citizens or people who are addicted to drugs.

“But it’s also about art,” he said. “It’s kind of a mesh of the two.”

The prints are for sale by silent auction through Feb. 29, and for 11 of the 14 pieces, 100 percent of the profits are going to nonprofit organizations, including:

• The Child Saving Institute
• Lasting Hope Recovery Center
• The Open Door Mission

“Homelessness is a very hard cycle to break, and this is a very difficult time to live in,” Jones said. “These are three great organizations that are essential to the health, not just of Omaha, but Nebraska as a whole. And they really can’t do what they need to do without the public support — not just one or two philanthropists, but people being aware that they exist, understanding what it is that they’re trying to achieve.”

Jones hopes, through his photographs, to contribute to that understanding.

“This exhibit is about real people, most of them going through hard times,” he said. “It’s about making people aware of these situations, and it’s about educating people about these organizations that are out there — how important it is to support them in any way.”