Devonte, as if wanting to know your business; Ashley, with almost a challenge; Leon, with a glimmer of a smile. All except Jose, who turns his bare back to show off his tattoo: "SURENO" in Old English lettering.

East Durham is in the Art Guild Gallery, in the form of 11 photographic portraits and five videos. The exhibit is called "Durham Stories: Not Hell But You Can See It From Here."

"My work is a lot about social issues and trying to confront people with these lives," said photographer Titus Heagins, who took the photos.

"East Durham" is practically synonymous with crime, narcotics, poverty, prostitution and despair. It's a section of town to which city officials have devoted programs after programs and meetings after meetings for years, to little visible effect.

Almost three years ago, Heagins started photographing people for whom it is home.

"I wanted to do work that, in some way, visually told their stories," he said, "but told them in a way that allowed them to express pride. Just because you are poor doesn't mean you are not prideful."

Pride and poverty

Titus Brooks Heagins has a political-science degree from Duke and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Michigan. Portfolios of his work are in collections of the Smithsonian's Anacostia Museum of Art in Washington, the Casa de Africa Museum in Havana and the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh.

"His documentary style celebrates aspects of lives that are typically hidden," according to a statement at the state Department of Cultural Resources Web site, "and seeks to capture in the essence of a single event the totality of the human experience."

Typically, Heagins' vocation takes him and his camera to places far away: Africa, Cuba, Vietnam, for example. He got interested in East Durham about three years ago because he frequently drives through it, going between central Durham and his home off the Wake Forest Highway.

"When I wasn't traveling," he said, "I wanted something to do to keep my eye sharp."

While keeping his eye in shape, Heagins also exercised a point of view that characterizes his work.

"I wanted to find a way of bringing the humanity of people who lived in that community out," he said.

"I think that, in some ways, photography has exoticized poverty. And this has helped continue to define groups of people as the Other, making it easier to ... not allow them to participate [in society] and give them their due."

'They speak louder'

Walking into "Durham Stories," size makes the first impression.

Eight of Heagins' photos are typical enlargements about 16 by 20 inches; but three are monumental, about three by five feet. He wanted to show them all that size, but space was limited.

"Images this size are much more confrontational," Heagins said. "They speak louder. They're much harder to avoid. It's much easier for you to see the face."

What a viewer sees in those faces depends on what the viewer brings to them: What to make of the three Hispanic boys astride their bicycles, of the shirtless black youth with NBA team patches all over his jeans, of the grizzled white man with "Carolyn" tattooed on his right arm?

Durham media consultant Willis Smith is impressed by "what it says about America and where we are right now. ... what the inner city of America looks like today."

All colors, all poor

Smith said he once stopped with Heagins at an East Durham house where a group of people were gathered.

"It was Latinos, it was European-Americans, it was African-Americans, it was -- they were all living together, they were interacting together. It wasn't this inner-city black typical kind of thing," Smith said.

"That's one thing Titus' work has sort of leached out. ... Inner-city America, that image is gone."

Poor people, in East Durham and elsewhere, find they have more in common than difference, Heagins said.

"Their daily experience of how they are treated by society is the same. ... And it's genuine friendships.

"The mixing is amazing," Heagins said. "Not to say that everything is always hunky-dory, but it's clear there's more than some sort of detente that has been reached in these neighborhoods. It's gone on beyond that now."

When art comes to them

"Durham Stories" remains on view through Feb. 1. They would seem to be getting heard.

"I've noticed a lot of people coming in and viewing it," said Art Guild Director Jennifer Collins. "A lot more people than usually. ... I think it's appealing to a larger audience."

Some who are not coming in, it seems, are the photo subjects themselves. That has surprised Heagins. Many said they were coming to the opening.

"'Definitely, I'm going to be there,'" Heagins said. "None showed. The place, I think, is somewhat intimidating to them.

"Many people in the Durham community don't come in this building. They don't feel that this is a place for them, don't feel that they belong."

For that reason, he said he'd like to find a place to show his work in East Durham where his portrait subjects would feel comfortable. But he has more work to do.

So far, he said, he has "maybe 40" images in his "Durham Stories" portfolio. He said he might keep the project going another year or so, and would like to finish with about 60 shots "that are as compelling as these," he said, and including a couple of shots of the place as well as of people.

"The storefront churches," Heagins said. "I want to make that presence known as, this is in the community and there are enough churches and they aren't necessarily converting anyone."