To look at her is to smile

When Eileen O'Connor walks the streets in her South Boston neighborhood, rides the T downtown, or goes shopping at outlet stores in Wrentham, people see her and quickly avert their eyes. Children often point and whisper among themselves.

For much of her life, she has avoided interactions with strangers, her nights usually spent at home in her small duplex, crocheting or watching Lifetime Television.

Disfigured by Sturge-Weber Syndrome, an extremely rare condition that can be deadly, O'Connor has tended to tuck herself away from public view. But several years ago, while working as a more-or-less anonymous City Hall clerical worker, O'Connor made what seemed an extraordinary discovery: When she picked up a camera, she could ask strangers to look at her, and smile.

Some of her superiors noticed an exceptional quality to her photographs and made her staff photographer for Boston's Commission on Affairs of the Elderly. Now, O'Connor, 52, takes portraits and candid photographs at luncheons, holiday get-togethers, and award ceremonies hosted by the agency. They are published each month in "Boston Seniority," a glossy magazine published by the city. While such photographic work is not often held to standards of art, O'Connor's photographs have a life and whimsy that some say makes them rise above the norm. The photography in the magazine, says her boss, is "noticeably better" since she arrived.

"This isn't charity. This is because she's the best person for this," said Eliza Greenberg, the elderly affairs commissioner .

For O'Connor, the camera has become a tool that allows her to dissolve the barrier separating her from the rest of the world. It gives her license to approach strangers and interact with them, and it has been a blessing in a life with formidable social obstacles. Strangers often react with fear or uncertainty. Some aren't sure she can speak. Looking for work in her 30s, she was turned away time after time when she applied at hospitals, banks, and offices.

"It's because of this," she said, motioning toward her face.

The affliction was, perhaps, all the more cruel because she was once pretty. When she was born, she looked much like any other baby, except for a light pink birthmark on her face. One of six children in a devout Irish Catholic family, she was raised on Meeting House Hill in Dorchester and attended St. Peter's Parish school. She had blonde, pixie hair and big, sparkling blue eyes.

"When my sister and I were looking over baby pictures, we couldn't tell who was who," O'Connor said.

Doctors said the blotch would go away. But as she grew, the stain deepened. Her mother bought her makeup to cover it, but threw it away after one use when O'Connor came home with her face caked with dirt from playing outside in the sticky makeup.

As O'Connor got older, the stain grew to be something worse, darkening and thickening, fed by the abnormal blood vessels in the head and neck that characterize Sturge-Weber Syndrome. Abnormal blood flow can cause brain damage, and in rare cases, death. O'Connor's brain has not been affected, but she lost vision in her right eye because of glaucoma.

Today, many of the estimated 100 babies born with the condition in the United States each year take medication to help prevent seizures and glaucoma and get laser treatments that destroy some of the abnormal vessels. The procedure often has to be repeated and doesn't completely remove the effects of Sturge-Weber, but it can stave off massive thickening and drooping.

But that treatment wasn't available when O'Connor was young, and as a teenager, she was in and out of hospitals as surgeons tried to correct the problems. Her only dream at the time was getting through high school.

"I never thought I'd graduate," she said.

After high school, she took a clerical job at a small industrial supply firm in Boston. After leaving that job, she couldn't find work for more than a year. A family friend who knew someone in city government arranged an interview for her at City Hall.

Soon, she started work as a data entry clerk for the elderly commission, where she performed her work well but remained largely in the shadows.

"I did reports, letters, mailings, stuffing envelopes, filing," said O'Connor, who moved to South Boston with her mother 11 years ago. "I was like an inside person."

Then one day in 1999, O'Connor brought a camera to a staff get-together, a going-away party for a boss. Taking pictures had been a hobby since her teenage years, when she saved baby-sitting money to buy a Kodak. She later bought a Polaroid and then a Pentax. But she had used the cameras almost exclusively to take pictures of her family.

The going away party had seemed like a family event to her, so she took pictures and put them in an album. When the commissioner at the time, Joyce Williams, saw the pictures, she asked O'Connor to photograph other events. She did it in an unofficial capacity for several years before being formally named staff photographer earlier this year.

Family members say she has always been outgoing around them, but now, O'Connor seems more comfortable in public. She recently spent months researching surgeons and new techniques that might help her, something her sister said she was unlikely to do before. It seemed to signal a kind of hope she had not had in the past. O'Connor ultimately decided against surgery.

"Who am I going to do that for?" O'Connor said. "Why go through all that pain?"

O'Connor, too, says she's changed. "I am more assertive and independent," she said. "I defend myself and make my own decisions."

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.