His gaze is steady and soft. He stares forward in a dreamy fog. And though he looks you straight in the eye, sunlight from a nearby doorway glinting off the dark pools of his pupils, it is evident his thoughts are elsewhere.

Is he contemplating? Is he caught in a fantasy? A memory? What have those beseeching eyes seen during his short life to leave such a haunting expression? He continues to stare at me, and I stare back. I am mesmerized by how simultaneously familiar and foreign he appears. “This could be the kid next door,” I think as I search for more clues to his identity. I imagine him sporting some athletic jersey and a backwards cap peddling up my street on his bike, popping wheelies as he spies an onlooker. Except for those eyes. Behind those eyes lives a story. It’s just one among many stories photographer Sean Kernan of Connecticut longs to share, if only we will listen or, should I say, look.

Kernan shot the photograph of this young man and several dozen others last February during a trip to a refugee center in Cairo, where he ventured to capture the plight of those fleeing war-ravaged Sudan. He spent two weeks at the St. Andrew’s Church Refugee Center taking the portraits of those seeking safety and assistance with the hopes of sharing their stories to encourage people abroad to wonder about these people or as he said, to really look.

“I wondered, what might you learn just by looking at their faces?” Kernan asked. “I want others to look at one of these people and imagine they are one of them...put themselves as much in their places as they can and just stay with them...Stay in the awareness of them.”

But getting the message out hasn’t been so easy. Since returning from Africa, Kernan has tried to donate his work to several aid agencies. While many took interest in the photos, none have taken him up on his offer. And Kernan believes there is a reason for that.

“It’s like I was going to GM (General Motors) with a car design and saying, here’s this great idea for a new car. They just don’t know what to do with it or me I feel like I’m walking around trying to give these organizations a gift they don’t know what to do with,” Kernan said.

Like Kernan, photographer Phil Borges likes to literally show the face of the issue. His most recent project involves photographing portraits of courageous women around the world to expose gender discrimination and to stir dialogue about how to obliterate inequalities. Borges is currently working on a book exhibiting portraits of these valiant women and their stories titled Women Empowered: Inspiring Changes in an Emerging World. The book is due out March 2007. The image collection will tour around the country, debuting at the United Nations Building, March 8th on International Women’s Day.

The collection has been almost a lifetime in the making. During his many travels Borges has collected the stories of his featured heroes. But it is more recently, over the past two years, that he has actively documented their inspiring life stories through film and pen.

“I like to tell the story through people,” Borges said. “Through their eyes and faces...I tell the stories of heroes, ordinary women who have done extraordinary things... I believe the most effective way of eliminating poverty is through women. Women invest in their families. They invest in their children. That translates into communities.”

But how do the images like those of Borges, Kernan and the myriad of other activist documentarians translate into the world? In other words, are the images enough to incite awareness, involvement and change?

“To me the portraits are a kind of hook to build the story around. They captivate to draw in the reader,” Borges said. “Imagery begins the process of awareness,” said the renowned environmentalist photographer Edward Burtynsky. “It allows us to begin to understand the complexity of an issue.”

Over the past 25 years Burtynsky has recorded the results of human desecration of the planet in conflictingly beautiful and horrific depictions of global industrial landscapes. His collections appear in more than fifteen major museums worldwide including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.