After finding piles of portraits in an abandoned studio, man finds a way to get them to rightful families

All he was supposed to do was go into an abandoned photo studio and measure the space, but when architect Brian Bononi entered the room, he knew he couldn't walk away from the stacks of family portraits set to be tossed in the trash.

Bononi thought about how long it took the families in the pictures to get ready for their photo shoot, and the logistics in getting everyone to the studio on time. "My heart sank every time I looked at the pile," Bononi told The Washington Post. "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."

The Portrait Innovations studio in Kansas City, Missouri, abruptly closed after the nationwide chain went bankrupt, blindsiding customers. Bononi decided he would do whatever he could to get the portraits left behind in the studio to the right families, before they were thrown away by the space's next occupant. His family helped him transfer the portraits from the studio to their house, and they began calling people whose names and numbers were attached to the portraits.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

So far, the Bononi family has been able to contact 63 customers by phone. They are still trying to find the owners of unmarked portraits, and have taken photos and posted them on Facebook. Lisa and Nickolas Ruffcorn were longtime Portrait Innovations clients, taking their three daughters in every year for pictures. Lisa had a canvas print made from their last session, and when she went to pick it up, was devastated to find the studio shuttered. "We're so grateful to Brian and his family for caring enough to get the pictures out of the closed store and taking the time and energy to find the affected families," she told the Post. "We figured we'd never get them." Catherine Garcia

YouTube

Watch On