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Lynn Blodgett, a college dropout who runs a Fortune 500 IT company, sees the invisible—and photographs them. His remarkable portraits of the homeless will be the look and feel of a November national public-awareness campaign to aid the unsheltered. There’s a linked soundtrack, too—a moving CD of rock stars jamming with homeless musicians—and maybe even a concert near you.

What must they think?
Here comes Mr. Geekyfiftysomething, smelling of a boardroom, necktie wagging like a madman’s tongue, sleeves rolled up on his white shirt. He drags a crazy expensive Hasselblad and a roll of what looks like white butcher paper out of his pickup truck or Mercedes, whatever he drove that day. Now he’s humping it through the worst neighborhood in Newark, after hours, film-noir shadows stretching, the homeless scattering from his approach like wild cats, or else staring, unblinking. Who wears a white collar into these mean streets and isn't a priest?

Lynn Blodgett, president and CEO of Affiliated Computer Services, the 432nd-ranked Fortune firm, has draped the white paper over an outhouse in the late afternoon shade. He’s handing out $10 bills to any of the wary homeless who will simply stand in front of the backdrop for a quick photograph. The roll of bills draws a crowd, as it has in the dozen or more cities where Blodgett has photographed the invisible army, America’s homeless men and women and children. He’s given out $30,000 of his own money, he reckons, to capture the faces that most people in the richest nation on earth won’t even look at.

“I say to them,” Blodgett explains, “‘I want you to tell your story. I don’t know if you’re mad or cursed or brokenhearted. The only thing you have are your eyes-you have to tell me your story just with your eyes."

These eyes that stare out from Blodgett photos have a holiness about them, offering an undeniable glimpse into souls that bear witness to sadness and sights most of us, God willing, will never see.

The photographs, compiled in the recently released book Finding Grace (Palace Press), will almost certainly bring Blodgett fame, the way portraits of unforgettable American faces made Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans famous. The luminous prints convey the dignity and humanity of tattooed men, weatherworn women and resilient, even sunny, homeless kids, and they’re powerful enough to already be raising awareness and funds for the homeless relief efforts the photographer supports. (A first offering of signed prints recently sold at Sotheby’s for more than $20,000, and Blodgett has pledged every penny of this and all other earnings from his photography to homeless causes.)

The project also throws down a social and spiritual gauntlet. Call it the debut of a completely new form: the Fortune 500 CEO-driven social consciousness book. “I do hope I inspire more CEOs to be more personally involved in this kind of work,” Blodgett says. “Business can be pretty desensitizing, driven by the demands of shareholders and markets and customers. But to be directly engaged with people who need help—it can save your heart.”

What's that sound?
Blodgett’s work has found its way into association with another initiative for the homeless, this one musical.

John McGah, 38-year-old founder and Executive Director of Give US Your Poor—an advocacy group for the homeless based at UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School—played in a little-known rock band for a decade; when The Wait finally called it quits for marriages and jobs, McGah took work conducting homeless research at the University of Massachusetts.

“I got sucked into the homelessness issue and saw the extent of the problem," he says. "And I saw the myths were just that—myths. I thought they might be dispelled through some artistic approach.”

He began conceptualizing and working on a documentary film called Give US Your Poor. The film has still not been completed, but in the course of McGah’s research he issued—through the nation’s network of shelters and homeless care organizations—a call for original songs by homeless musicians for use as a possible soundtrack. After much culling of the many songs he received, McGah used musical and professional connections to mail a demo of the works to a number of artists.

He got a call from Natalie Merchant.