Front Steps Project documents Harvard families at a distance

Since April 1, photographer Michelle Gendreau has taken pictures of more than 60 Harvard families, keeping her distance and spending no more than five minutes at each house. She is part of the Front Steps Project, started by Cara Soulia of Needham who, as Gendreau describes on her website, “wanted a way to bridge the physical distance we must maintain” and “to spotlight faces in her community who were no longer so visible to each other.” The project is also a way to rally online community support for a local nonprofit.

The movement is spreading in towns across the state and in the country. Residents can go online to view a gallery of pictures of members of their community, both ones they know and those they don’t, standing in front of their homes. As a recent CNN article said about the project, “With so many feeling isolated or disconnected from friends, family, and the rest of the world these days, something as simple as a happy photograph can help keep us going.”

Photographer Michelle Gendreau and her family, Old Littleton Road. (Courtesy photo)

Gendreau told the Press in a phone conversation that this project is really out of her comfort zone; for starters, she’s not a family photographer. “I don’t do anything in five minutes,” she said, and she views herself as a bit of an introvert. Moreover, she and her husband and three daughters have lived in Harvard only since last September, though they were designing and building a house here over the past three years. She said her husband saw an ad for the project on Nextdoor Harvard and said to her, “You could do that.”

Despite her reservations, she realized that she could, indeed, take on the project, which would be about the Harvard community. She had the right gear with a distance lens, and the idea that it would be a documentary appealed to her as closer to her past photographic work. She said she sees the project as not about individuals but as a record “of this moment in time in this place with these people.” And she did have an hour or so each day to take pictures. There were as many reasons to do it as reasons not to do it, she said. Because she doesn’t yet know many people in town, she asked two women whom she knew through her daughter’s rowing what they thought of the idea and how she could go about getting out the word. They were encouraging and helpful, she said.

A change in plan

Doing Front Steps photos is very different from Gendreau’s plan “to redirect” her art in 2020. She said she has felt a pull toward fine art and the conceptual, exploring space, time, place, and memories. Gendreau’s educational background is in economics, with a graduate degree in education, but she got interested in photography as an outlet when the girls were young. Two of them are dancers, and she wanted to capture the essence of their movements. Her first pictures were terrible, she said, so she took some classes. She worked as a freelance photographer, doing project-based work, sometimes in collaboration with other artists. This year, she was ready to explore something different.

For now, Gendreau’s “redirection” is on hold. When someone contacts her, she sets up a day and time to come to their home. She likes to photograph more than one family in the same part of town at a time. Since she allots only five minutes per family, she tries to get a sense of the subjects through a brief—and distant—conversation. She takes note of any trait or mannerism that comes out in the exchange, and she looks to reflect that in the photograph. She wants to “capture a genuine moment, whatever that might be.” The subjects arrange themselves, though Gendreau may ask for a few adjustments. If kids can’t stay still, she photographs them where they are (“I love when people give you a glimpse of normal”)—running in the yard, sitting on a tree branch, or squashed together in a lawn chair. “There are a lot of chickens, goats, and tree climbers in Harvard,” she laughed. In her own work she prefers black and white film, but she said color is more suitable for these quick, in-the-moment takes.

Pillar of the project

One of her favorite pictures, one she called “the pillar of the project,” is of three generations (though not all related) living in the apartments in the old Whitney house at the corner of Fairbank Street and Littleton Road. Behind a white fence, a mom with her arms around her two daughters and two older women line up at a safe distance apart. “But,” said Gendreau, “clearly looking out for one another.”

Gendreau works with digital cameras, and uses post-processing software once she pulls the images onto her computer. She emails the digital file of two or three photos (“Hard to get everyone’s eyes open at the same time”) to the family and asks them to choose one for inclusion in the community gallery, which is posted on her website. “The photos need to be seen as a whole,” Gendreau said. She’s not sure where the gallery will “live”; she would like to make a print version but isn’t sure that will happen.

She said some photographers have created a GoFundMe page to see how much money they have raised for charity. Gendreau said while it would be cool to know the amount of money she raises, she has chosen to keep it simple. She encourages, but doesn’t pressure her subjects to donate to Loaves & Fishes or Community Harvest, or to some other organization of their choice.

For Gendreau—as for all of us—“This is so far from what I expected to be doing right now.” And yet, for her, “It has been such a positive experience.” She’s been helping the community, and “it’s shown me I can do something in five minutes.”

Email michelle@michellegendreau.com to view the harvard@home gallery or to sign up for an appointment to have a family photo taken.