Beauty Where There Is No Beauty

Queenie McEwen had a hard life and drew on that life to create photographs that showed, as she once put it, "beauty where there was no beauty." Her life ended last Tuesday, when she was stabbed to death in her Leland Avenue house in East Nashville. Police said the 57-year-old was recovering from knee surgery; her son, unable to get an answer on the phone, found her body when he came by to check on her.

Neighbors told reporters the things that neighbors always tell reporters: she was a good neighbor, a kind person and how terrible and senseless it all was. Initial reports focused on police findings: her front door had been forced, there was no evidence of robbery or sexual assault—no evidence of a motive at all. There was no mention whether the police had found her cameras: the old Minolta manual she called "Old Betsy" or its successor, a somewhat newer Minolta. It was with these cameras that Queenie McEwen shared her gift of direct and sympathetic portraits of homeless people.

Neighbors told reporters the things that neighbors always tell reporters: she was a good neighbor, a kind person and how terrible and senseless it all was. Initial reports focused on police findings: her front door had been forced, there was no evidence of robbery or sexual assault—no evidence of a motive at all. There was no mention whether the police had found her cameras: the old Minolta manual she called "Old Betsy" or its successor, a somewhat newer Minolta. It was with these cameras that Queenie McEwen shared her gift of direct and sympathetic portraits of homeless people.

Over the next few days, as word filtered through the arts community and among her former co-workers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, expressions of shock at her death were combined with expressions of admiration for her art. In those images, homeless men and women often gaze frankly into her lens, and somehow—this was Queenie's great talent—in their eyes you could see beyond the labels and judgments that society places on those at its fringes. You could see the children these people had once been, the lifetime of abuse and hurt they had endured. Queenie's subjects trusted her, and because of that she was able to show the rest of us the empathy she brought to her photographs. We were literally seeing through her eyes.

There was good reason she was able to identify with the marginalized. Her own life's story included being born into poverty in Nashville, being sexually abused as a child, struggling with alcoholism and mental illness. She was not a stranger to the kind of lives being lived by the homeless. But Queenie also told of the redemption she found through her art, first in painting and then in photography.

I met her in 1998 when, shortly after she had begun work as a janitorial staffer in VUMC's Environmental Services department, she found the office of News and Public Affairs, where I work, and dropped off some of her photographs as part of an employee photography contest. She had a winning photo in the contest that year, and I grew accustomed to Queenie showing up at my door unannounced with a portfolio under her arm, brimming with excitement about a new batch of pictures. A couple of years later, I assigned Jessica Pasley to write a cover story about her for the VUMC employee magazine, House Organ. Queenie was so excited about being the "cover girl." The day the magazine was delivered, she came by to pick up an armload of copies for her family and friends.

She left Vanderbilt in 2003 and stopped showing up at my door. I learned later that she had participated in group shows with the local African American artist group N4Art, and her work had been included in exhibits at Live Along the Lake and Legends of the Blues, festivals produced by Metro Parks.

She left Vanderbilt in 2003 and stopped showing up at my door. I learned later that she had participated in group shows with the local African American artist group N4Art, and her work had been included in exhibits at Live Along the Lake and Legends of the Blues, festivals produced by Metro Parks.

"I thought very highly of Queenie and her art, and I was always pleased when she participated in our exhibits," says Lena Lucas, gallery manager at the Centennial Arts Center. "She was a special lady."

"I love taking pictures of faces," Queenie told Pasley in the House Organ story. "There are stories that need to be told. Engaging, wonderful and personal stories. It's amazing what you see in faces.... I've learned to look at things in more than just one way."

Police are continuing to search for her killer.