Beautiful Faces Calendar
Reported by Erik Smith
Web produced by Rachel L. Miller

Kendra Dew snaps a photo.

What is it we see when we look in the face of a child? What is there that brings us such joy, such reassurance, such unconditional love, and at times such burdening pain?

Perhaps we really see ourselves in a living mirror that reflects a momentary glance at what we once were when life was measured more easily, emotions flowed without the restraint of inhibition, when we slept in our beds beyond care.

Kendra Dew has spent life as a grownup looking directly into those mirrors. Through a lens and viewfinder she searches for the fleeting instance in children's time.

"I always loved to photograph children. When I was a child, I had a little camera and would take pictures of kids in the neighborhood," Kendra says. "So no matter what else I've photographed over the years, I seem to keep going back to the children and that's why I specialize in the kids. I love the kids."

Kendra Dew photographs a baby in her studio.

On this day in her busy Berkley studio, Kendra is at work on a project that began a few years ago. It is an annual calendar of the innocent face of childhood. Twelve angelic portraits, each painstakingly hand tinted, not to obscure their place in time, but to celebrate the truth of Down syndrome.

"We want people to see these children through the same eyes that they might see other children," Kendra says. "Everybody sees calendars of nature and, you know, children playing dress-up, but why not these children?

"They're the same as any other child. They have special needs, but they should be photographed and looked at and viewed like any other child. So we hope this does make the difference."

The yearly calendar is the tangible passion of Cynthia Kidder, mother, teacher and crusader. Her heart was strained 10 years ago when her son Jordan was born with that extra chromosome responsible for Down syndrome.

Doctors could not tell her much medically. Far less was known then, of course, but now Cynthia has the facts, and she is spreading them from the bottom of her strengthened heart.

"The greatest choice of what I do is the emotional reward of a new dad calling. I've had a dad call from his car phone in California on his way home from the hospital," Cynthia says. "The baby was two days old, they were very upset, they were told the baby had Down syndrome and were struggling with that information and the nurse at the nurse's station had the calendar. She gave him the calendar and he looked and said, 'My little girl can be beautiful.'"

One of Kendra's photos.

The calendar is the centerpiece in this alliance of love, but Cynthia and Kendra are working on other ideas too. Greeting cards have been added to the inventory of the small company that Cynthia started called Band of Angels. All feature the timeless portraits of Kendra Dew.

The venture is purely love's labor. It has not turned a dime of profit, but that is not the point.

"Our kids are so much like other kids then different," Cynthia says. "That the earlier you can communicate that to parents and they can believe in their child, because the number one thing any of us has to do for our children is believe in them."

The calendar's tinted Victorian images will gaze back at us with the same joy and love innocence. Perhaps now with a better understanding, because together we have all looked into the mirror they hold up for each of us to see.

The 2001 calendar is available online -- click here for more information or call 800-963-2237.

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