Matthew Jordan Smith’s photographs take us with him on an emotional journey [and] tell a story of… how the families and recovered children showed their inner strength and, out of their experience, helped bring about changes in law and a non-profit organization that helps find missing children and protects them from exploitation.

-- Editors, Lost and Found

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) teamed with the American PHOTO Mission Series to create Lost and Found, a project that beautifully — and sometimes tragically — underscores the importance of photographs in solving cases of child abduction and exploitation.

To striking effect, Lost and Found emphasizes the essential act of looking.

Photographer Matthew Jordan Smith and reporter Frank Lovece combine images and words to tell each family’s unique story, without sentiment or sensationalism. Each picture and each truthful account presume a leap of faith — that in seeing the world as it is, we will be moved to make it better.