(C) Susan Mullally Like the disabled former Marine who proudly shows his black tag from Narcotics Anonymous -- the symbol of staying clean for two years.

Mullally shoots the photos against a gray background -- support pillars of the interstate.

The exhibition isn't exactly uplifting or depressing. The photographer does seem to capture, in each photo, the dignity and personality of each individual.

In one photo, a bearded man with eyes of Paul Newman-blue gazes into the camera, pushing a grocery cart. His shirt is frayed and faded, but his passenger -- a toy dog -- is new, sporting a red muffler.

"I pick up stuffed animals all the time," he told Mullally. "I found him, this little dog, in a dumpster down in the projects in the South Side while I was picking up cans.

"The reason I picked it up is because whenever I see a little child I give it to him."

In another image, a former librarian peers over spectacles, his cigarette tucked between his lips and a wooden board game set propped on his lap.

"I like chess and backgammon; they're intelligent games," he said.

A woman with long red hair and a cross around her neck clutches a purple tambourine -- a $3 leftover from a garage sale. Her boss gave it to her, she said, and "now I'm making a joyful noise for the Lord."

(C) Susan Mullally When Mullally moved to Waco from Winston-Salem, N.C., nearly three years ago, she left behind an inner-city church she loved.

As the neighborhood had changed, many of its members had moved, but "the church was built on neighborhood and community," she said. "That didn't change. The church didn't fold up and go away."

"I was looking for a similar situation here," she said. "But I certainly didn't think I'd find it under I-35."

Then she met Dr. Jimmy Dorrell, pastor of the church and executive director of Mission Waco, who teaches Christian social action at Baylor University. Mullally began to attend the church weekly.

In the bulletin, she spotted a notice: "We need a photographer to take photos for the directory."

"They had always wanted one," Mullally said. "I thought, `I'm a photographer. I can do that.'"

She helped make order out of the "pure chaos" of a constantly changing congregation, Dorrell said.

"Some are in jail or have moved," he said. "Our congregation tends to turn over a little more than others. Now we have a little directory, and it's more personal."

But Mullally wanted to do more.

"I knew from the get-go I wanted to do their portraits," she said.

She used a similar approach to that she used for her "virtual museum" -- individual photos of friends with their most cherished items, exhibited in a display case. She posts them, along with friends' tales about what they keep, on her Web site.

Of the people who gather under the bridge, she asked each the same questions, "What do you keep? Why?"

Activist, artist and author Elin O'Hara Slavick said Mullally's photos create "a spark of recognition, an empathy ... she does not consider her subjects as freaks. She is making photographs as a good citizen, as a concerned woman ... ."

Mullally said she knew that "if you talk to somebody, you begin to know them. I wanted to do it; I just didn't know if it would work out."

It has, Dorrell said.

"The temptation is always to make poor people look sad and poor, the worst of the worst," he said. "But Susie didn't do that. She captured the way they are."

Mullally has been invited to show them at Duke University in Durham, N.C., March 22-April 10 and, in the fall, at Pennsylvania State University's University Park campus and Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C.