Architect Brian Bononi was at a job, measuring a portrait studio that had gone bankrupt in Kansas City, Missouri. That was when he saw it — stacks upon stacks of family portraits that had been taken but never delivered to those who sat for their photos. He couldn't get the images off his mind. They were stacked near the entrance just waiting to be thrown out with the trash, and that didn't sit right with him.
“My heart sank every time I looked at the pile,” said Brian, 39, said. “I knew that those photos meant a lot to the people who were in them and that they’d be gone forever if I didn’t do something.” Then and there he decided he would make it his personal mission to reunite as many families with their long-lost portraits as he could. After all, if he didn't do it, who else would? Those images would simply be gone and forgotten.
After a segment appeared on ABC News about what Brian and his family were doing, he was inundated with calls about the images.
Brian felt determined to get as many of the photos back to the families as he possibly could. “I kept thinking, ‘What if those were my photos?’” Brian said. “Wouldn’t I want somebody to rescue them for me?” he told the Washington Post. So he got to work.
His whole family got involved in the process. They started by organizing all of the portraits into groups. "We alphabetized all of the portraits and made a list of those that had full names and phone numbers and those that didn’t,” he said. “Then we started making phone calls.”
Now he's reunited dozens of families with their photos. Those families had assumed they would never see their portraits again, but luckily, this man decided to change that fate. With the power of social media, which led to several news outlets picking up the story, the process is really just getting started.
Customers had apparently been searching for their long-lost photos, too, so they're likely even more grateful to Brian for what he's doing. After Portrait Innovations, a nationwide chain, went bankrupt and abruptly closed more than 100 shops, people couldn't find their photos or figure out how to get them.
"These are people's photos from graduation, newborns … If anyone knows anything about getting family portraits taken. [There's] coordinating outfits, a Saturday when everyone can make it. … Can you imagine getting there … and then never getting the canvas from this photo shoot?" he asked ABC News.
He's definitely right that it requires a lot of effort to get families together for a portrait session. That seems to have motivated Brian even more to try to reunite the families with their portraits.
It's really a lovely gesture, especially because it turned out to take so much time and effort on his part. From first organizing the images to sharing them on social media and making phone calls, it's definitely been a ton of work. It's a good thing he had the help of his family.
Brian told ABC News that his kids were into helping him, and he also made it like a little "community service" project. But it's also amazing for his kids to get to see the power of his good deeds. When people were reunited with their photos, it had to be a happy moment for everyone involved.
Good deeds can go a long way, that's for sure. When it comes to family photos, you just don't know what those might mean to people. Brian was determined to get one photo of a large family back to the owners, which he showed on ABC News. After he found the family, one family member told him, in a follow-up segment, that her daughter in the picture is currently fighting cancer. It's probably wonderful to have that beautiful photo for the entire family to now enjoy.
Brian is still searching for many owners of the photos. He's encouraging any families who think their photographs might be in the stacks to reach out to him by email at [email protected]. "We're just trying to get everyone connected here in Kansas City," he said.
