NASHVILLE — Journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp spent eight years documenting the unchanged bedrooms of children killed in U.S. school shootings. An exhibition of these photographs was held in New York. Hartman said, "I wanted to shake people out of the numbness I felt whenever there was a school shooting. I was moving on quickly and forgetting the names of the children who were lost, and I knew the country was doing the same."

Eight families of children killed across five different schools granted permission for Bopp to photograph their children's bedrooms. More than 170 children have died in school shootings in the U.S. since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Hartman has covered school shooting incidents for 29 years, beginning with a high school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi.

In Nashville, Tennessee, Chad and Jada Scruggs' daughter, Hallie Scruggs, was killed in a 2023 shooting at The Covenant School at the age of 9. Two other children, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney, also died in the incident. Hallie Scruggs's bedroom has remained unchanged, and she had three older brothers. Chad Scruggs serves as a pastor at the church affiliated with The Covenant School.

Jada Scruggs said the physical items in the room are tangible reminders of her daughter. "All these physical things are tangible ways of reminding me that she was real, she was here, and she lived with us. In some ways, this room holds the space for her." She said the room encapsulates both sadness and joy. "The room kind of captures all the feelings of sadness and joy because it is a capsule of time."

Chad Scruggs recalled going into Hallie's room after her death. "I went into her room to lay on her bed to smell it. I knew that scent would go, and I wanted to be there for it. I just laid on her bed and cried by myself." He described the room as evolving from a symbol of presence to one of absence. He said, "Initially, that room was for me an indication of presence. Now, it feels more like an indication of absence. It feels more like a relic now."

Other children whose bedrooms were part of the project include Gracie Muehlberger, who was 15 years old when she died in the Saugus High School shooting in Santa Clarita, California. Dominic Blackwell, 14, also died at Saugus High School. Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and Charlotte Bacon, 6, died at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Bopp took 10,000 photographs for the project.