First Exposures: Youth Opportunities
Through Photography
Group of aspiring photographers working with mentors to produce real zines with an authentic do-it-yourself feel. Each piece reflects a personal interest or theme: the experiences of an autistic brother, dogs, cityscapes, school, traveling. Photographers work on their pieces over several months, mastering the use of the cameras as well as stylistic compositional elements such as balance, contrast, foreground and background.
Artworks in themselves, the zines incorporate commentary and captions in the style of the photographs and their subjects. Adobe Books in SF’s Mission District, a musty old eclectic used-book store where people still make time to sit in armchairs and discuss Immanuel Kant and Goethe and modern politics and enjoy free pastries left as offerings to wooden figurines of Hindu and Buddhist deities, showcases the work of the First Exposures students.
From First Exposures:
First Exposures: Youth Opportunities Through Photography is a special interest mentoring program where academic skills and life skills are developed by combining the benefits of mentoring relationships with art education. The volunteer mentors are professional, commercial and fine art photographers with a commitment to youth and to education. Their students are creative young people, aged 11-18, with backgrounds that include homelessness, foster care or low-income living situations. The students and mentors work together in one-to-one partnerships in a group setting. First Exposures fosters supportive intergenerational relationships in a stimulating environment of active learning.
First Exposures is a demanding program. Both the students and their mentors agree to attend each Saturday class from 10:00 to 2:30 PM for at least one academic semester. Most students and mentors stay in the program for one year. Students develop photographic skills and get exposed to a larger world than they may otherwise know. We meet at either SF Camerawork (a nonprofit photography gallery) or RayKo Photo Center (an excellent community darkroom). We reinforce our class time spent in experiential learning environments: field trips to local newspapers, major museums, alternative art spaces, commercial photography studios, and local colleges or universities. Once each semester we go on a “Photo Safari” field trip to locations like San Francisco Zoo, Fort Point, the Hyde Street Pier, the Marin Headlands, or SF Botanical Gardens. The students use their cameras to explore and interpret these places along with sites and people closer to home.
First Exposures was initiated at Eye Gallery in 1993 and was redeveloped under SF Camerawork’s sponsorship in 1996. SF Camerawork is the base of a support network for the partnership between the student and his or her mentor. This network includes the support of the youth service providers who work collaboratively with SF Camerawork and First Exposures, Bay Area mentoring organizations, professional child care workers, and the student’s families or guardians.
For additional information, contact Erik Auerbach at
(415) 512.2020 x107